Do We Need a Longer School Year?

Hugh Pickens writes "Jennifer Davis writes that while summer holds a special place in our hearts: lazy afternoons, camping at the lake, warm evenings gazing at the moon, languid summers can be educationally detrimental, with most youth losing about two months of grade-level equivalency in math computational skills over the summer and students from low-income families falling even further behind. A consensus is building that the traditional nine-month school year might be a relic of the 20th century that has no place in an increasingly competitive global work force and an analysis of charter schools in New York reveals that students are most likely to outperform peers if they attend schools that are open at least 10 days more than the conventional year. What of the idea that summer should be a time of respite from the stresses of school? There are two wrong notions wrapped up in this perspective. The first is that somehow summer is automatically a magical time for children but as one fifth-grader, happy to be back at school in August, declared, 'Sometimes summer is really boring. We just sit there and watch TV.' The second mis-perception is that school is automatically bereft of the excitement and joy of learning. On the contrary, as the National Center on Time and Learning describes in its studies of schools that operate with significantly more time, educators use the longer days and years to enhance the content and methods of the classroom. 'We should expect our schools to furnish today's students with the education they will need to excel in our global society,' says Davis. 'But we must also be willing to provide schools the tools they need to ensure this outcome, including the flexibility to turn the lazy days of summer into the season of learning.'"

Re:Alternate hypothesis

[cappp]

The articles themselves pretty much cede that point.

During the school year, disadvantaged children manage to catch up somewhat to more advantaged students. But during the summer, they lose those gains while their more advantaged peers -- whose parents can afford to arrange for summer enriching activities -- maintain theirs.

Moreover, they note that the issue is more complicated than just throwing a couple of extra days into the mix.

We should note, however, that a long school year tends to go part and parcel with several other policies, such as a longer school day and Saturday school, and this should make us cautious about assigning too much importance to a longer school year in and of itself. A more conservative conclusion would be to think of the package of the three policies having a positive association with student achievement.

Re:Summers off?

[mister_playboy]

I'm glad I got summers off... neither my elementary nor my high school had AC. (Both do have it now however)

Works for us pretty well

[jht]

Our son is going into 5th grade. He's attending a public school that has a 190-day school year with an extended 8-3 day, and they go to school until late July, only getting 5-6 weeks of summer vacation. In compensation for the long July in school, they get a vacation week in late October and another one in the beginning of June that other kids don't get.

For the most part, he loves it. And when he and his schoolmates get back to school, there seems to be less time getting kids back up to speed than there is at the conventional schools here in town. Overall results trend better here as well, and we've got a lot of overall issues in the system here outside of our school. Within reason, I think an extended day/extended year model is ideal for most learning situations, but not necessarily universal. I don't think school should be fully year-round, there should be some sort of summer break. But the 2+ month summer vacation is a relic of this country's agricultural roots, and it certainly could go away without causing a problem.

Doesn't matter.

[Exitar]

You can have students attend school even 365/365, but if in end you teach them Creationism I don't think they'll "excel in our global society" anyway.

Re:Summers off?

[Mashiki]

Schools were out during the summer so that children could work in the fields. How relevant is this now?

I don't know about where you live, but in my neck of the woods(Ontario), kids still work in the fields here. In fact, kids will still be working in the fields here until about the end of September and sometimes right up until mid-October. The provincial government doesn't like it, not a single bit, they've tried reallllly hard to piss all over farmers who have kids who do this. In most cases, the answer of parents have been to homeschool. It's gotten exceptionally bad in the last 6 years since the Liberals(left) have come to power over it, and they keep sloshing around the "try to ban kids from working on the farm" it keeps getting knocked down by the PC's(Conservatives who are right of centre) and NDP(far left).

Though I shouldn't be surprised at this response from the odd ball American. Especially since Obama dept. of agriculturehad tried to ban kids from working on the farm, and driving farm machinery.

Who pays?

[gmhowell]

Who pays for the extra month(s) of school? Localities across the US are already strapped for cash. Increase teacher's salaries by 20% (ish) and things get worse. And when will they do their continuing ed to remain accredited or get higher degrees? Similar stories for custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, etc. In many (most?) school districts, only parts of the administration are 12 month employees. There's also an increase in electricity and possible retrofitting of AC in places that don't have it.

Re:No

[AK Marc]

It doesn't cost any more than the current system. In fact, there have been estimates that a year round schedule will cut maintenance costs.

Re:No

[D'Sphitz]

It's like that douchebag that owns Papa Johns Pizza trying to tell me that my pizza will cost a whole extra dollar to pay for health care for his employees

Actually it is 14 cents [go.com].

Re:No

[russotto]

FUCKING PAY FOR IT .

Fucking Christ. Seriously?

Here, let me give you a tale of two school districts. One, the school district of the city of Newark, NJ, spends $21,000 per pupil per year (or $17,000 depending on how you calculate it), and is one of the worst in the state; students don't learn shit. The other, the school district for Millburn Township, NJ spends $17,000 per year (or $14,000 using the other method) and is one of the best. You know what sort of improvement you're going to get by sending the kids in Newark to school 12 months a year? Fuck all. You know what sort of improvement you're going to get by sending the kids in Millburn to school 12 months a year? Still fuck all.

It isn't the money, and it isn't the time. Figure out why Johnny isn't learning jack shit in school during 9 months of the year (and fix it) before proposing that he go 12 months to learn the same jack shit.

Re:No

[Mabhatter]

The problem is that most schools are funded by LOCAL property taxes. That's not really "the problem" but many politicians have had states takeover handing out the money, bringing everybody down.

Let's use Michigan. Literally half of property tax goes to schools. It USED to go directly from the county treasurer to the school district and the states chipped in maybe 10-20% the Feds almost nothing except discrete programs (for instance lunches are pulled from food stamp money). The changes are pretty drastic after 1990's... The rules are different now.

In Michigan we passes a law that added 2% to sales tax and capped "homestead" personal home taxes to inflation, only adjusting at sale time. There was a problem because seniors were being "taxed" out of their homes because property values shot thru the roof. Unfortunately, that IS how property tax is supposed to work to allocate resources more efficiently.

The problems started immediately. The State 2% sales tax increase didn't cover the spread of decreased property taxes. Worse, the state handed out all the districts the same share. A boon to poor districts, but huge cuts where localities with lots of professionals were paying 50% more taxes in some cases.

To "fix" that problem, of individual districts voting in MORE taxes to cover the losses, passed another law that the districts had to have most of the operating taxes sent THRU the state. AND localities couldn't add more operating taxes because that wasn't "fair" to poor districts.

So now NOBODY will vote for one more dime of school taxes because it doesn't go to THEIR schools. We have districts with great building and technology budgets, but they legally can't pay their teachers one dime more. Of course just as fast as the state grabbed all that money, the first thing to go was that 2% committed to schools... Or rather it became 2% for "education spending". Then the state cut its share of general fund to colleges and trade schools... Taking the funds away from k-12 schools that the law moved to the State's care. (and nobody can raise local taxes ... Still) what's worse is that the "education" fund (that 2% sales tax) had a balance for over a Decade... Not a lot, but enough to smooth over year-to-year tax changes... But the most recent Govenor took THAT fund and paid it to colleges instead of the State's normal yearly share. So we spent 15 years building a cushion and in one budget we trashed it. Not to mention the state has been starving higher education for decades as well. It was just in the last few years that State University tuition cut from the STUDENTS is more than from the state (the other third comes from federal, alumni, and industry grants).

So sure, blame unions or whatever... How about blame the people that are pushing the system to break intentionally as they possibly can?

Re:No

[Knave75]

I have a question for you, why was education better when the relative salary of teachers was lower than it is today? The armies that fought the U.S. Civil War were the most literate armies in history (as evidenced by the many letters and journals that they wrote), yet at that time school teachers were generally paid a pittance.

So, when I first read the above, I figured you were just trolling. However, a quick google search turned up the following [britannica.com]:

Civil War armies were the most literate in history to that time

Emphasis mine. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to ascertain the precise mistake made by the parent post.