Year Round Schooling

Monica Pappalardo

20 October 2010

Fundamentals of Curriculum Development

Year-Round Schooling

Year-round schooling is not a new concept but is still a controversial debate for many people. Year round schooling does not mean that children are sent to school every day all year long. Year round school calendars take different forms. The calendar can be single track, which means students and school personnel all follow the same schedule. Multitrack is when students and teachers divide into two or more groups and follow staggered schedules, which is usually used to reduce overcrowding. Most of the time, year round schooling does not mean an extended school year, which is different from year round because there is still 180 days in a year round school. The difference is that the days are dispursed differently so that there is no summer vacation.

The main reason for the argument of having year round schools is that many children return to school after the summer vacation and forget many skills and content since they haven’t practiced them for several months. According to the National Association for Year Round Education, 3,000 year round schools enrolled more than 2 million students in 2007. They also reported that in 2002-2003, 3,181 public schools now function year round compared with 408 schools in 1986-87. There are many arguments for and against year round schooling and are as follows.

For Year Round Schools:
· Departure from the traditional school year calendar could better the needs of society and increase student achievement.
· Explain that the traditional calendar is rooted in economic instead of educational concerns.
· Research shows that year round schools can have more positive effects for children who are at risk for academic problems, such as those from low income families or who are typically lower performing students.
· Two meta-analyses found conclusive results for year round schooling. Worthen and Zsiray (1994) and Cooper, Valentine, Charlton, and Melson (2003) found:
o Students in year round schools do as well or slightly better in terms of academic achievement than students in traditional schools.
o Year round education may be particularly beneficial for low-income families.
o Students, parents, and teachers who participate in a year round school tend to have positive attitudes about the experience.
· Decrease teacher burn-out due to frequent breaks.
· No need for parents to worry about child care for summer break or summer camps.

Against Year Round Schools:
· Year round schooling is disruptive to family life. Difficult to schedule family vacations.
· Provides little or no academic benefit.
· Impedes different kind of learning that children experience on their summer breaks.
· Need the resources and the cost of climate control in buildings. Some schools have no air conditioning during the very warm months.
· Resources for building repairs and cleaning.
· For the multitrack year round schooling, not all students are on a year round schedule, so there is a need for teachers to choose year round or traditional schedules.
· Older students cannot get a summer job.

With all these pros and cons to the issue, there is still the fact that much of this is not conclusive in research. Since there are so many different forms of year round schools, there is no valid research which shows that academic achievement is better. Also being that resources would have to stretch for a longer amount of time is not taken into consideration. With budget cuts schools are receiving it is difficult to say that year round schooling is the best option. Many schools only have minimal resources, especially those schools where low-income families attend. These are the schools which year round schooling would be needed and research says academic achievement would increase; however, can these schools afford the costs to having a year round school? These are all questions and concerns which keep this topic under debate, regardless many schools are changing to the new year round school calendar.

Huebner, T. A. (2010). What Research says about Year Round Schooling. Educational

Leadership

Year round schooling. (2004). Education Week. http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/year-round-schooling/