Do We Need a Longer School Year? 729
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.'"
meh (Score:5, Interesting)
my kids are in a semester system. one month at christmas off, one at spring break, one in summer... same number of days as the "traditional method" without the big gap in summer. works just fine imo.
Not a longer school year; just better distribution (Score:5, Interesting)
We don't need a longer school year. What we need is better holiday distribution. RIght now where I live (Ontario, Canada) our kids get two weeks off in December, one in March and about 9 in the summer.
It would make more sense to have August, December and April off so there are three month-long breaks. That way, there's no long summer holiday during which kids can forget what they've learned. It also makes holiday planning a bit easier on parents; we don't have to cram everything into the summer.
Re:Alternate hypothesis (Score:5, Interesting)
That absolutely is a factor, but this is far from the first research I've seen (as an educator myself) that indicates three weeks is the longest break the average student can take before skills start to regress. This is why some schools use the "happy medium" of year round schooling. The number of school days is the same as a ten month school year (standard here in Canada) but no break from school exceeds three weeks. Instead, there are more frequent and longer breaks during the school years. (Three weeks at winter, a week at Easter, four days off instead of three for most long weekends, etc.) Academic results are higher (on average), students usually like it once they've tried it because of the more frequent breaks, and working parents enjoy it more. The true test, however, needs to be comparing two otherwise comparable private schools. As you have correctly pointed out, any private system should be able to outperform the local public system on average because the parents who really don't care and produce students who don't respect the need for education send their kids to the public system.
Re:Summers off? (Score:4, Interesting)
Schools were out during the summer so that children could work in the fields. How relevant is this now?
For some people here in rural agricultural Ireland, very. Ditto elsewhere in the countryside. But that's maybe 5-10% of the population. If school isn't going to be a year-round thing, then cut some of the summer holiday and add it to the other breaks. Or make the timings entirely local, as you described.
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
We need several things. The end of the massive summer off. Take the quarters and put a couple of weeks between them. Second, the end of grade levels beyond sixth, or maybe beyond eighth, as important metrics. If proper feedback testing on their abilities and instruction was performed for the years leading up to this, the student gets placed in classes in each discipline relevant to the student's abilities. Allow parents to have one free "appeal" in the form of a test to re-place the student, but after that initial result, all further appeals cost the parent to prevent helicopter parents from abusing the system. For students that place at mediocre levels, offer practical electives so that when they get out of high school they have something that they can do for their income where they won't need a lot of further training. If anything, start with an intro to trades type of class where students get exposure to trades, and use that to place them.
Some may call this unfair, as it no longer gives each and every child equal opportunity. I would say that parents choose the path their child takes from the very beginning, and the school should accommodate that decision while still allowing those who choose to excel despite home choices to do so. If little Johnny wasn't encouraged to do well in school then little Johnny doesn't get to be placed into the classes where his sheer presence gets to drag others down to his level if he is inclined to do that. He doesn't get college prep classes as he's probably not going to college. On the other hand, if he does well in school, for whatever reason, he'll be placed to where it's expected that his education will continue past secondary school.
Lastly, for hellions, boarding school. Uniforms, curfew, mandatory attendance, the works. Put a fence around the place if necessary. We do not serve them by letting them get away with outright bad behavior. Boarding school is expensive, but as a whole, is it cheaper to let them disrupt normal school and keep them there?
Terms and semesters (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No (Score:2, Interesting)
You know, you're probably right. If we had no summer and short breaks instead, we'd probably be better off academically.
But I don't think academic efficiency should be our paramount goal, above all others. I don't think we should be looking at kids and asking ourselves how to maximize their future utility as workers - even though it is for them.
When I look back at my summers, I remember vast stretches of time where I was basically free to do anything and had little or no responsibilities. I didn't have to worry about having to do anything. I was free like most of us never will be until maybe retirement. Sure, maybe I didn't use it productively. I mostly laid around or played with friends. I read a lot of books. Sometimes I was bored and just wanted school to start back. But it was great. And I sure wish I could have that back. There's more to life than working and yeah, even learning.
If you want to take some kind of psychohistory perspective, maybe you could even say that we owe a lot of our individualism and ideals to all that.
Re:I might be a hardass, but (Score:2, Interesting)
"He doesn't seem to mind too much. "
The serial killer part of his life comes a bit later.
Re:Alternate hypothesis (Score:4, Interesting)
In my country the expensive schools have shorter terms and achieve better academic results. I don't think it's a simple case of how much time you spend, but how you spend it.
sports the NFL and NBA need to forced to take non (Score:2, Interesting)
sports the NFL and NBA need to forced to take non college players or that colleges should have a sports ONLY plan where you don't have to take any classes but can play.
Re:Alternate hypothesis (Score:4, Interesting)
Saturday school? Seriously? Is nothing sacred?
Not when your goal is to train up kids to be drones, ready and willing to fall in line and slave away 80 hour work weeks to make their employer rich. That's why they don't teach critical thinking skills or financial education either.
Re:Alternate hypothesis (Score:5, Interesting)
Riding a bike is not the same kind of skill as solving algebra equations.. Biking is kinesthetic and math is intellectual. The brain treats these skills very very differently. Nevertheless, ALL skills regress over time. It's a drawback to neurology that can adapt. Old cruft gets thrown out.
Perhaps the real problem is that some large percentage of what's taught in school is cruft. How it's taught can also be 'cruft' as well.
Re:Alternate hypothesis (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No (Score:2, Interesting)
In my opinion, you guys started demonizing and drastically underpaying your teachers.
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. As best I can determine the average wage in the U.S. in the 1850s was somewhere around 80-90 cents a day, which works out to between $24-$27 a month. The average teacher's salary at the same time was $4-$10 a month. If the estimate of average monthly salary in the U.S. is correct, teachers today do much better relative to the general population (teachers today with a bachelor's degree earn a pro-rated salary that is slightly above average for a person with a bachelor's degree) than they did in the 1850s, yet the evidence suggests that students received a better education in the 1850s.
Re:Summers off? (Score:5, Interesting)
children driving a tractor or whatever is NOT abuse.. While I did not grow up on a farm, I was driving the family 12hp workhorse to mow lawns and haul wood and such.. I was around 6 or 7.
Of course it's not child abuse. Only in the warped mind of some government nanny is it child abuse, and the worst offenders are big city liberals who've never spent a day working on a farm in their lives. I spent my summers working on my uncles farm, either getting into the typical farm type trouble and in turn getting myself out--such as just how do you get a field beater that you just got stuck in 6" of mud out(that's easy, you go get the dozer and hook up some chains and pull it out)--to yeah and now we go off and harvest the corn. Enjoy that there 12hr day kiddo, by the way this is the CB...enjoy talking with your nieces and nephews, and the truckers along the highway(the 401 was nearby).
I've cut myself, sliced my fingers open, gotten more stitches than I can count. Never broken a bone though. Meh I've been spit on by horses, pissed on by cows. Hit and smacked around by sheep and goats. Had a bull charge me, because I was walking by. I've been up at the crack of stupid milking just about every stupid animal you can think of that can make milk, I've sheared things, I've busted my ass and done hard work and learned a major work ethic doing it. And I learned how to make silo-shine as they called it.
And I wouldn't trade that time for anything in the world.
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because you cannot see the point of sports does not mean that there is not a good one.
Seriously, you are going with the "you're too dumb to see things my way" argument?
There is really no point in high school sports, and even less in middle school sports. All the team effort lessons can be taught in Science, or even English classes by group learning projects.
You could have learned as much in a basic after school pick up game of basketball as 3 years o football taught you, and you would still have your knees and far more of your brain cells intact.
My high school taught home construction as a team activity out of the industrial arts program. Building 3 bedroom houses, and selling them at a profit, until labor unions objected. The workmanship was excellent and electrical and plumbing codes were followed to the letter. The grade was based on how well they understood the concepts, as well as how they got the job done, and extra credit if the house sold at a profit.
Some of those kids went on to become engineering students, others went straight into the trades. None of them went on to running around bashing into other people for a living.
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, it will cut maintenance costs.
I was in education for a while, a decade ago. A very, very larger percentage of the cost of running a school is salary. 70% to 80% if I remember correctly.
Schools don't pay property taxes, or many other business expenses, and it's a very labor intensive industry - so much of the budget is for people. By increasing the number of days of instruction, you increase the number of days you pay teachers, and cafeteria workers, and bus drivers, and librarians, and nurses, and security, and... on and on.
Where I went to school, it was only hot enough to need air conditioning a few months of the year - summer. So we didn't have AC in the new high school. On those rare, hot days of fall or spring it was miserable. It would cost many tens of thousands of dollars to retrofit the building at this point.
I think there's a lot of factors you don't see.
I'm not saying what we have is great, but you can't just add to the number of days taught by lowering maintenance costs.
Re:Alternate hypothesis (Score:5, Interesting)
My parents were divorced and I came from a family of blue-collar workers and immigrant farmers. I hope that you are not suggesting that they sent me to public school because they didn't care or respect the need for education. My mom held down a job while attending night school and still managed to get me to school on time with my homework done. In the US, in the 80's and early 90's, our school years were constantly shortened to deal with budget cuts. It had nothing at all to do with the quality of education, it was all about screwing over poor kids and the "if you're poor it's because you didn't work hard enough" philosophy that Reagan popularized.
Theoretically all my "wasted" summer months were a big drag on my education, but I contend that the measure of the performance of a kid with respect to schooling is not a measure of future success, nor is it the most important aspect of a child's life. Summer Break offers opportunities to learn other useful life skills. When I was very young, I would spend Summer with my grandparents, who lived in another state (and who weren't poor). They sent me to a great summer camp, where I made friends, performed in skits, played field hockey, swam, etc. One summer I even went to baseball camp. Once I was 12 or so, I would work (under the table) all Summer and when I turned 14, I started working real jobs, with a paycheck. I'm sure I forgot a few proofs from Geometry or some SI units, but I learned so many other skills that are important to success (not the least of which is how much minimum wage sucks).
After many years of state college, I wound up studying at an ivy league university, surrounded by upper-class kids from private schools. Their teachers had PhDs and their schools boasted all kinds of fancy education models. They had all been pushed by their well-educated parents to succeed right from the womb. Many of them actually knew each other from way-back, because they had competed at the same "science competitions" (I still don't know what those are). None of them had jobs--instead they volunteered at soup kitchens, or whatever, because that is the sort of thing fancy-pants universities like on applications. All of them had better educations that I, and all of them retained far more of it. They could talk about literature and sound generally smart and educated. But they were also high-strung and sheltered. Not one of them had ever done a day of real manual labor. Their definition of "hard work" was wildly different from mine and they all expected "hard work" to translate into success automatically. I prefer my rich patchwork of life experience and realistic expectations to their sterile bubble of self-indulgence and I credit my long, budget-induced summers with much of what makes me unique.