Blog: The Year-Round Schools Debate

Year-Round Schools, which are also known as a modified school year or balanced school year, is the rearrangement of the traditional school calendar to provide more continuous learning throughout the school year instead of having a long summer break. Students in the modified school year still receive the same amount of instructional time as those on the traditional calendar. According to the National Association for Year-Round Education (NAYRE,2000), the number of year-round schools in the US has increased from over 400 in the late 1980’s to 2,880 during the 1999-2000 school year and nearly 2.2 million students enrolled in more than 3,000 K-12 schools during the 2005-2006 school year (Gerard, 2007). Because of this growing trend, we need to make sure that the changes are educationally beneficial and in the best interest of students, families, teachers and administrators.
PROS for Year-Round Schools
The main positive advantage of Year-Round schools is that the schedule improves academic outcomes and increases student achievement. This is accomplished because it eliminates or reduces summer learning loss which is when student forget information that was taught before the summer break. Additionally, teachers do not have to spend a month to review what the students forgot because no break on the modified schedule is longer than 8 weeks. According to Cooper et al., (1996), summer learning loss is most dramatic for students from less advantaged backgrounds and “at risk” students who appear to benefit from a more balanced school year. Secondly, Year-Round Schools can also accommodate students who are falling behind by giving them the opportunity to participate in intercession which is a time to provide remediation or enrichment during the breaks.
Another benefit for Year-Round Schools is greater satisfaction among parents, students, teachers and even schools as a whole. Regarding students and teachers, there are more positive attitudes towards schooling, less burn out and less stress when there are shorter breakers more frequently. Additionally, absenteeism is reduced by both students and teachers which is instrumental in improving academic achievement. Administrators favor this schedule despite some workload and organizational challenges (Winter, 2005). Parents are generally positive about this schedule because it limits the need for long term child care and they can avoid expensive summer camp costs. Lastly, the move to year-round schooling often is a catalyst for other changes, in curriculum, staff development and parent support which can improve the school system (MGlynn, 2002).
The third main benefit for year round schools is that it is better suited for societies’ needs today. To ease overcrowding and save money, a multi-track schedule is used which divides the teachers and students into tracks. At any one time, there is always at least one track on vacation or intersession so they are able to handle more students than the building is capable of (Gerard, 2007). Lastly, global completion is something our society needs to think about as we lag behind other countries. By increasing academic learning time (time on task) in the classroom, we may increase the ability to produce skills that employees need to work in a global competitive economy (Cuban, 2008).
CONS for Year-Round Schools
Opponents of the modified schedule make the point that just changing the schedule has little increased educational value (Winter, 401). Multiple studies have found no differences in achievement between students in year-round and traditional schools (McMillen, 2005). Additionally, in relation to the traditional school year, the modified schedule is relatively unexplored. There has not been enough research and evaluation of these programs to really conclude if they are more beneficial. Lastly, a study by “Time to Learn” shows approximately 21 % of schools abandoned the Year-Round School calendar from 1995 to 2000 (McGlynn, 2002).
The second disadvantage of Year-Round schools is that the schedule could negatively impact students, teachers and parents. Without a long summer break children may not be likely to attend summer camp, where they learn valuable skills and learn to socialize with peers. Teenagers depend on the summer break to earn money and learn work-place skills so they can prepare for their future. For teachers, the year round calendar involves a tracking system so that teacher would have to perform four beginning of the year reviews instead of one. This could be intimidating and stressful especially considering the lack of preparation time for the next academic year when there is no long summer break. For parents, if their kids are in different tracks it could be difficult to coordinated vacations/schedules and could potentially cause a split within the school community (Winter, 2005).
Overall, we can see that there are both positive and negative aspects of the Year-Round Schools. Changes must be educationally beneficial and the students need to be our first concern when determining which program to use so that we increase their chances for success.