Year-round schools: Point/Counterpoint
Are year-round public schools a good idea?
Year-round schools would bridge learning gaps
By Julie Drewry
Drewry is executive director of secondary instruction for Roanoke City Public Schools.
As the executive director of secondary instruction for Roanoke City Public Schools, I would like to share my opinion about year-round schooling. This topic has been discussed by my colleagues in Roanoke City Schools recently as we have been brainstorming how we may provide learning experiences that will help our students achieve higher levels of academic success.
When I refer to “year-round schooling,” I would like to define the term in a non-traditional manner. The traditional school calendar is 180 days, beginning in August or September and culminating in May or June. It was designed in a time when children worked on farms after school and in the summer. The most common forms of year-round schooling utilize the same calendar length of 180 days, but, instead of a three-month summer break, they provide shorter, more frequent breaks throughout the school year for students.
In order to facilitate greater academic success in our urban environment, I believe that we must provide more days of contact time with our students. In Roanoke City Schools, we have an obligation to our students and our community to define year-round schooling as a means of providing educational opportunities for students throughout the entire calendar year, not merely for 180 days as defined by the traditional length of a school year.
Any teacher would tell you that students have difficulty retaining information over the long summer break. There is long-standing research that shows that summer learning loss is most acute for low-income students in urban areas. Given that research, it is imperative that we try to bridge the summer learning gap by providing opportunities for enrichment and remediation for all students throughout the summer months, not just 180 days of the calendar year. In particular, we must provide students with opportunities to increase their aptitude in all areas, with particular emphasis on reading, writing and mathematics. The learning experience must be different from that of the regular school year, but extend the content to provide a firm foundation for the following school year.
Opponents of year-round schooling often cite reasons that are primarily related to inconveniences or are of a financial nature: childcare costs, increased facility costs, overworked staff, difficulty scheduling professional development opportunities and a perceived difficulty in scheduling extracurricular activities.
However, the Roanoke City Schools’ proposed model is one that focuses on the needs of the learner and places academic achievement at the forefront. It is not about changing the calendar year, but extending it to provide more opportunities for our students to learn. The key is not just extending the amount of time, but maximizing quality learning experiences that will lead to student success.
More than students’ class work is impacted
By Peter Tarlow
Tarlow is a sociologist who lives in College Station, Texas. He is president of a firm specializing in tourism security.
Year-round schooling raises some concerns that must be considered. Children need what some people call “the other education.” The purpose of education is to provide not just mere book learning, but multiple tools so that young people may have a greater chance of success in life. Summer jobs and family time provide important life lessons. The United States is a nation where many children live in single-parent households, and the constriction of summer vacation signifies a major threat to an already weak family structure.
Forcing children to return to school during the summer months also translates into children being forced to practice sports or go on school buses when the weather is hottest. Lastly, a 1998 study by the Texas legislature found there tends to be a negative correlation between the early start of the school year and standardized national test scores.
Here are some questions to consider in regard to the year-round school issue:
1. How will year round schooling affect a particular community? The logic behind community control of education is the realization that there is no one model that fits all communities. Communities must take into consideration the demographics, economic situation and costs of building maintenance.
2. How will year-round school impact student employment? For example, the tourism industry provides multiple entry-level jobs to high school students. If students can no longer work in the summer, are they trading theoretical better grades for less life learning opportunities?
3. Which parts of the community will be affected negatively by children being in school over the summer? Some sections of the business community or community at large may be hurt by year-round schooling. What effect will their economic decline have on a community’s general economy?
4. Will year-round schooling help some segments of your community? Are there some aspects of community that will be helped by having children vacation at different times? Can these benefits be used to offset other losses?
5. What are the sociological and psychological consequences of year round schooling? Such a major change is sure to affect many aspects of American society. How will children see grandparents or relatives who live at a distance? What will happen in situations where one parent has custody, and the other has summer visitation rights?
6. What are the economic consequences of this new program for teachers? Many people go into teaching because it provides flexible schedules. If these schedules cease to be and teachers no longer have a block of time in which to gain secondary jobs, will these changes affect the number of people who can afford to become teachers?
December 9, 2012 - 7:45 AM
LOL oh yes by all means Mr. Tarlow, let’s design our education system on the needs of the tourism industry. It’s win-win: you keep your guaranteed income stream from tourists, and you get the undereducated, unskilled workforce you need to fill the many seasonal jobs that pay low wages and have no benefits or job security. Year-round schooling would result in a better education with fewer gaps and lost time, and a skilled workforce capable of advocating for itself. The service economy wouldn’t like that at all.
Although I do agree with your 6th point: we don’t pay teachers enough and they often have to supplement their income with summer jobs. We ought to do something about that. I suggest increasing pay for teachers and paraeducators.
As an educator, I remain on the fence about year-round schools. My years of traveling and living in Europe, where year-round schools are the norm, have not convinced me that this model will work here in the United States. Both sides of this debate have their moments, but neither opinion really speaks to reality in present-day America.
My biggest problem with those who favor year-round schools is their assumption that more hours in the classroom—or a greater frequency of hours spent in the classroom—will result in greater academic achievement. I suppose for the purposes of the “kill and drill” way in which we adhere to standardized tests, this might be true. Unfortunately, this approach is wholly dependent upon recall- and knowledge-level learning, which is not learning at all. If year-round schools mean more of this, there will be no gain in true academic mastery of concepts and ideas.
Moreover, I will never understand the argument that singles out children from urban environments as being beneficiaries of year-round schools in greater proportion to those from suburban or rural environments. I suppose when one is factoring in subsidized meals and after-school activities, this would make sense, but these have only a very tenuous relationship to academic achievement.
On the other hand, continuing with our current schedule is less disrupting to families, employers, and the tourist industry. But then, is it the responsibility of the public schools to fit in where it is most convenient for either of these? If Americans really supported high educational achievement, I would think that everyone outside of public education would adjust their schedules accordingly. Priorities are priorities, after all. And as far as employers are concerned, there are plenty of adults who are available year-round, and who could use some supplemental income in an economy that is limping along at best.
Then there is this: increasing numbers of American teens now prefer to remain unemployed dependents of their parents during the summer months, and parents are increasingly accepting this as the new normal. Of those who do get jobs, there is growing dissatisfaction about their job performance from both employers and customers. Speaking from personal experience, the entrepreneurs I know have a far higher opinion of the work ethic of older workers than they do of the younger generation’s. So where’s the gain here?
We have a crisis of values in this country. An entire generation of young people have been allowed to think that they are entitled to things they don’t work for; no amount of adjustment to the public school schedule is going to solve this. Schools need to seriously concentrate on meaningful ways to raise the academic bar.
More rigorous instruction in the public schools, and enforcement of higher expectations from families are the keys to higher academic performance. Anything less is simply nibbling around the edges.
I think “year round” schooling has many important elements, especially for the most formative years and the teen years. IOW, the more time in school, the less time running the streets, the malls and the useless activities that children are not only allowed but encouraged to pursue now.
#3 Right. Keep them indoctrinated.
Crazy me, I thought the manifest purpose was (predicate word) education.
I don’t have a problem with year-round schooling, and I certainly would not consider the desires of the tourism industry to be major considerations (they’ll adjust), even recognizing that the current schedule was a concession to the agriculture industry.
Mr. Van Velzer, can you please explain this point further? “We have a crisis of values in this country. An entire generation of young people have been allowed to think that they are entitled to things they don’t work for…”
Has not every generation since the beginning of time contributed to what we have become? With the exception of those who grew up in The Great Depression, every parent has slaved to give their child more than they had and for their child NOT to struggle as they did. It was all very well meaning and without the slightest idea that such would be wrong. It is interesting to me that you equate that with what you call a “crisis of values”. Children did once have to work, and work darned hard for all they got and then some. Is that what you want to go back to? Are you referring to spoiled children or children without parental guidance and rules, or both?
6 “With the exception of those who grew up in The Great Depression, every parent has slaved to give their child more than they had and for their child NOT to struggle as they did. “
I don’t think this sounds the way you intended…are you saying that those who grew up in the Great Depression did NOT work to ensure the next generation had it better?
No, that is not what I meant, in The Great Depression, many children worked as hard as or alongside their parents. They had too. A real childhood like the succeeding generations were able to provide did not exist for many of those children from what I understand. I have no doubt that is not what those parents wanted for their children, it was just the way it was.
In my mother and father’s family, the older children born in the 30′s had it much, much harder than the younger children born in the late 40′s and 50′s. There were wealthy people with spoiled and pampered children but they were not really the norm in the Depression Era and shortly thereafter. Heck, that may have been the catalyst to spoil children so afterward when they could.
That’s what I thought you meant, Sandi. I agree, and thank you for clarifying.
Sandi, what I meant by that was that far too many of the younger generation have been allowed to believe that simply showing up counts for achievement. Sure, their parents (many of whom are my age or a few years younger), acted to “protect” their children from some of life’s unpleasant experiences out of love and a genuine conviction that they were doing the right thing. This is one of those times when the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions.
Over the past thirty years, I have seen the change in students’ attitudes toward school, work, life, family, and all the rest. This change doesn’t apply to all, of course, but the trend is unmistakable, and my view here is commonly held among those in my peer group of educators. I wish none if this were so, and I don’t go around looking for evidence to prove a point; I don’t have to, as I’m confronted with it every day.
Permissive parenting and an undisciplined society are the culprits. American schools used to turn out students who were vastly better prepared for the real world than students are today, yet teachers are nowadays better prepared to teach, and schools are much better funded now than they were in the 1950s and 1960s. The implementation of year-round school schedules is a high-profile idea that has more potential for creating debate than for moving the needle. Why on earth would one want to do more of the same of something that already doesn’t work?
Our problems with the public schools are social in nature, and that’s the trouble. I remember a day long, long ago when I was finishing up my last semester of teacher certification courses. Our professor handed out slips of paper to all of us, so that we could suggest a topic that would be the focus of that day’s discussion. I wrote something like, “The problems with today’s public schools are a reflection of our society’s problems. How much success can we expect from attempting to solve our social problems at the school level, and what impact does this have on the core task of teaching students how to think?” That was 1978. Sure, we had our concerns then, as we were still reeling from the effects of the social revolution of the 1960s. But I’d be more than happy to be teaching a class of students from that era. And I shudder to think of the results I’d receive from today’s students if I required the quantity of work that my professors expected from me and my fellow students “when I was in school” (rolling eyes here).
Students today are just as intelligent as those of any previous generation, and I still love working with them. Moreover, I am often impressed by their mastery of communications technology. Still, their ability to solve problems, to be able to organize their findings and articulate them in written form is woefully underdeveloped. They need to be challenged; they need to feel the struggle. Success should not be easy, and it certainly should not be guaranteed. Looking for the class that will give them the “easy B” isn’t in their long range interests. Watering down curricula because students aren’t submitting quality work doesn’t do any of us any good. Giving students a “pass” for simply warming a seat is counter-productive. A computer programmer I know once said to me that the standard in his industry is driven by the refrain, “garbage in, garbage out.” That saying has much broader application than to just the computer field.
your all correct