WHY CONSIDER YEAR ROUND SCHOOLS?

Proponents of Year Round Schools Cite These Reasons:

1.  Higher academic performance

There is little significant evidence that proves year-round schools improve the quality of education. Many researchers and educators have come to this conclusion, including Prince William County, Virginia, Jefferson County, Colorado, Albuquerque, NM and many other school officials after years on the year-round calendar.

"Year-round school generally does not have significant positive effects on achievement.".......The National Education Association

"There is no evidence that indicates there's any difference in achievement between year-round and traditional schools.".......Tom Payne, director of California year- round education program

"Year-round schools is not a program for academic achievement"....Floraline Stevens, director of the 1990 Los Angeles evaluation report (The LA city schools tried YRS in their 543 city schools for several years and then returned to the traditional calendar.)

"Evaluation of student achievement finds students do no better or worse [in year-round schools.] .......The Virginia Department of Education

The Vincent, Alabama school system has been on the year-round schedule since 1993-94. After four years they still score below the national average and still rank last among Shelby County Schools. Their 4th grade class ranked 560 out of 759 schools on the SAT in 1997....Alabama Dept. of Education Report

2.  Children retain more of what they've learned on a year-round calendar

Many psychologists believe this is an unproved and illogical claim. Randall Engle, a University of South Carolina psychology professor specializing in human memory, says children forget most of what they learn in the first three weeks after a lesson. Therefore, shorter, more frequent breaks would give children more opportunities to forget and increase the need for review. According to Don Patterson, a member of the Albuquerque, N.M., School Board (where a year- round school program was tried and then discontinued) as a scheduled school break approaches, students "lose focus in anticipation of having time off from school. Then, when they return to class, they need additional time to reacclimate themselves to the learning environment. Consequently, short breaks probably do more harm than good." If retention is a problem, children will forget regardless of how long the break is. A year-round calendar provides six breaks in which to forget, giving teachers need to review after each break. Although some teachers complain about the time spent on review after vacation, review can be an important reinforcement in learning. If a student successfully learns the material, retention should not be a problem, students may be merely memorizing, rather than learning, the lessons.

3.  Year-round schools are cheaper

A 1995 exhaustive research study of American year-round schools conducted by the British Columbia Teachers Federation says "It appears reasonable that year-round schooling has the potential to save money but it may not in fact do so." In a North Carolina survey of year-round schools "over half of the principals indicated that running a year-round calendar required more operational funds than a traditional calendar." A recent finance study of year-round schools by the Lewisville, Texas school district showed no financial advantage to implementing year-round schools. Analysis of the Orange County schools showed operating costs increased 15-25% in the first year of the pilot year-round schools. Prince William County, Virginia abandoned its year-round program after finding no significant cost savings. An evaluation of Houston's year-round program found it to be extremely expensive, due not only to increased utilization of facilities, but to extended labor costs.

4.  Overcrowded schools

Overcrowding is one of the biggest reasons for implementing the year-round calendar. Many school systems are forced into year-round schools to alleviate this problem. Many of these same schools return to the traditional calendar within 5 years.

5.  Provide day-care for single-parent families or families with 2 working parents

Year-round schooling has been implemented at high-risk, low-income school systems where parents have few child care options in an effort to help combat this problem.  Parental supervision and support is sometimes low and the year-round schedule serves as a type of government-funded child care, with schools offering programs during the "vacation" breaks.  (How many employees would be willing to take a vacation at the office?)  

With the exception of the extended school year plan, year-round education does not decrease the amount of idle time children have, it simply shifts this time around.  However, a year-round schedule does prevent students from participating in the many educational and recreational opportunities available only during the summer months.

Were YRS to become widespread, many of these summertime opportunities would not be available at all at any time of year.  Most seasonal programs and businesses would be unable to make ends meet if they were forced to go from a 10-12 week summer to a 6 week summer. Offering the same services during the shorter breaks during other seasons would be difficult, if not impossible, due to weather and staffing problems.  Full-time employees who only had work to do for a few weeks at a time every 9 weeks or so would be unaffordable.  Locating and training seasonal staff for three weeks at a time would be extremely difficult since most seasonal employees and volunteers are college students who would be in class during the non-summer months.

The year-round schedule would also keep high school students from getting summer jobs.  Many businesses are understandably reluctant to hire someone who can only work for 3 - 7 weeks at a time, and as was pointed out earlier, some seasonal jobs would simply not exist if a majority of schools were to go to a year-round calendar.

6.  Everybody's doing it

In 1904 Bluffton, Indiana became the first American community to adopt a four-quarter school calendar, an early variant of the year-round model. The town returned to a traditional school schedule in 1915.  

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, during the 1995-1996 academic year, 42 million students attended some 83,000 public schools.  According to the National Association for Year-Round Education (a YRS advocacy group), 1.7 million students were enrolled in 2,368 public schools that operated on some sort of year-round schedule. This shows that only 2.85% of public schools in the United States were operating on some sort of year-round schedule.

"0.0015% of private schools are year-round. Most of these are Catholic schools in poor inner city areas. If year-round schooling is so good, why are no private schools interested?"... British Columbia Teachers Federation Report regarding United States school systems.

7.  You're afraid of change

This is a comment people make when they cannot support change for some logical reason.  In effect they are admitting their position cannot be supported by pure reason, so instead they attack the words or personalities of those they disagree with.  There is even a term for this behavior, "ad hominem".  No one is "afraid" of winning the lottery or taking a better job or starting a family - all of which involve a considerable amount of change.  People resist change when they believe they will be worse off after the change than they were before it.  It's not change itself that people have a problem with - it's the consequences of the change.

8.  Let's just try it for a few years and if it doesn't work out we'll change back

Our children do not need to be the subjects of an educational experiment.  Especially one that has already been performed hundreds of times with similar unsatisfactory results.  With no conclusive proof of any tangible benefit, why subject more children and their families to the disruptions in their lives that alternative school calendars bring?

Children grow up fast.  An eight year old child has only one chance to experience life as an eight year old.  Once that time has past, it's gone forever.  Why impose the time pressures and constraints of an continually interrupted school year along with a shortened summer which forces families to choose between traditional summertime activities?  

Opportunities lost can never be reclaimed.  Sure, you can always change your school back - but you can never change your child back.

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