School? All year?
Although a large quantity are against the fact, many scientists are proving that a full time student attending school throughout a rolling 12 months receives higher grades and retains more information than those who receive a summer break with zero academic activity. While year-round schooling would negatively affect student’s personal lives, it would still ameliorate the students learning process throughout the year. In LZ Granderson’s article from The New York Times on July 14, 2013 he proposed an argument “Year-Round School is What’s Needed, Not Camp.” In the article Granderson explains the effects of summer breaks, extracurricular summer camps, and even those who have an academic based summer. LZ also explains the process every teacher must go through to reteach information most students have failed to retain over their three-month summer vacation. In a key portion of “Year-Round School Is What’s Needed, Not Camp,” Granderson explains scientific studies shown on the learning process. The article questions why educators haven’t proposed the issue to the school board. In this section of the article Granderson introduces a neuroscientist that says, “during summer vacation kids can forget anywhere from one to three months’ worth of math and reading skills.”
…show more content…
By educating children better, the workforce would be a lot smarter.” In fact the students would then remember almost three times more information than those with a summer break. When the time comes for students to enter the workforce, they are more prepared, educated, and well-minded. Without a summer break the teachers wouldn't have to go over the same content that had once taught before because of lack of academics during the summer. Short breaks are what're needed not
In his article “Go Year-Round: A Push for True Summer School”, Milton Chen, the executive director of Edutopia, urges readers to use the year-round schooling system. He explains in brief words what the summer vacation was for. “…when farm families needed young people home during the summer months to replace the three R's with the two P's -- plantin' and pickin' " (Chen). He carries on discussing that the problem with the school days is not only the amount, but the schedule of the school day. The curriculum is too tight; neither the students nor the teachers have the time to step away from the books and text and learn from the outside. The students do not have the chance to go into the outside world and observe what is going on in the society that they live in. Additionally, the teachers do not have the chance to decide how their time is spent because it is spent on the strict schedule of the classroom.
Do students get bored towards the end of summer? Do students forget what they learned from the school year before? Sarah attends a high school in Indiana, while Hannah goes to a high school in Illinois. Due to the year round schooling (YRS) in Indiana, Sarah has a shortened summer. Sarah receives two-three weeks off of school for winter break, fall break, and spring break. Once Sarah gets back from her breaks, her teacher has one day of review and moves on. Hannah does not have to go to school during the summer but only receives a week or two off here and there. When Hannah returns to start school after summer ends, her teacher takes two weeks to review what they learned the year before. The breaks for Sarah last a lot longer than they do for Hannah. The extensive summer break disconnected Hannah from school and she forgot everything. Year round schooling would benefit students because it would reduce negativity toward school and stress.
The first reason why kids should have a summer break is that it makes school less complicated. According to Jennifer Brozak, a disadvantage of having a year round school is that the school budget has to increase. They will need to have more fundraisers in order to keep the school going. If they neglect to get the amount of money they need they sometimes cancel and let the students have a summer break. In addition, teachers are having difficulty with planning lessons for students and grading papers in a short amount of time they have (Brozak). In addition, Brozak says, because of the short amount of time teachers have to grade papers they are prone to burnout. This is one of the reasons that schools should have a summer break because both teachers and students’ mental pressure because of work (Brozak). As a student, I can say that breaks will be necessary to recharge and prepare myself
This shows that year-round school is at least as good as the traditional schedule in helping students learn. Year-round school also allows more time for remedial classes during the breaks, which can help students who are falling behind during the school year catch back up. This is in contrast with summer school, which only occurs after school is over and students are finished with the curriculum, making students have to start a totally new class just to catch up. Remedial classes reinforce material that is fresh in students’ minds instead of forcing them to recall something they may have learned half a year ago and probably forgotten. This once again cuts down on the time it takes to bring students up to speed with their classes.
Does year round school truly have a positive impact in the lives of students? Various studies do suggest that year round school is helpful. There are some disadvantages to this type of schooling that are preventing all schools from switching to this type of scheduling. In earlier times schools were only teaching throughout half of the year so that school would be out of session when it was time to work in the fields. This type of scheduling is still common today even though only a small portion of agriculture is tied into education and kids are no longer required to work. “In 1994, the National Education Commission on Time and Learning (1994) urged school districts to develop school calendars that acknowledged (a) differences in student learning and (b) the major changes taking place in American society. The report reflected growing concern about how the school calendar relates to students at risk for academic failure” (Cooper, Nye, Charlton, James, & Greathouse). As a result. many are fighting for year-round school. Year-round school has proven to be beneficial in the lives of students and has lead to greater success in the classroom. Although, there are some downfalls to year-round schooling.
The average school period is one hundred and eighty days with small breaks in between and a three-month break during summer to ease students’ minds and let them relax. The Board of Education should make all schools in the United States year-round to increase educational time and decrease the loss of knowledge over the breaks. It gives students the same time to relax and plan family vacations periodically throughout the year, but never creates the stress of changing sleep schedules that summer break changes. Not only is it a good way to enhance education, but it also is better for planning family events, positive effects on budget, academic achievement, and could decrease the absence rate of students.
Imagine a school year that never ends. A year without summer, relaxation, and vacations with family. Summer is the time of year that every student cannot wait arrive. But what if the playful time filled with friends, smiles, and laughter did not exist? What if school remained in session year-round? This is happening in 3,181 schools across America and is gradually increasing (edweek.org). The government calls it: Year-Round School. There are both many pros and cons to this controversial issue in today’s education; however, Year-Round School is not a good decision because of the social outcomes, the financial costs, and the academic effects that Year-Round School burdens on the students.
Some advantages of year-round schooling include improved achievement, improved attendance by both teachers and students, reduced discipline problems, lower teacher stress, increased motivation due to frequent breaks, and increased opportunities for enrichment (Palmer and Bemis). During the two week breaks in between school sessions, students have the opportunity to take classes on karate, ballet, photography, cooking, and swimming. This intersession provides time for hands-on, big project classes that get kids involved in topics that interest them. Intersession can also be used as an intervention for students who are falling behind. “Karl Alexander, sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University, studied 800 students for more than 20 years in Baltimore’s elementary schools. He found that by ninth grade, low-income students had fallen 3 ½ grade levels behind their middle-class peers. And most of that gap was attributable to learning lost over the long traditional summer” (Schulte, 2009). The biggest driving force and proponent of year-round schooling is the effect of the “summer slide.” Students lose two months of achievement in math skills and students from low-income families lose more than two months in reading achievement according to the national Summer Learning
Year-round school could be very disruptive to the learning environment. Richard L. Worsnop remarks that notable memory loss occurs within
During summer, many students forget what they learned the year before, and teachers must review material done last year. People in year-round schools believe that because of the shorter breaks, teachers have to spend less time reviewing material, and can move forward in their teaching. According to the National Education Association, “one of the main reasons for switching to year-round schools is to improve with student academics.” Although there is no proof, many schools believe a year-round schedule helps improve students academic skills.
Year round school eliminates regression of learning due to extended time off. Having a year round school can reduce what people known as summer learning loss ("The Pros"). Almost every child will experience a decrease in their math over the time of summer break each summer break ("SUMMER LEARNING"). “On an average students lose two months of reading skills over summer” ("SUMMER LEARNING"). After
Many schools are considering changing to a year-round school schedule. The schedule would have students attend school year-round with several three-week breaks rather than the traditional school calendar, which begins in the fall and ends in the spring. There are many benefits in year-round schooling over the traditional school calendar, students don’t have the long 3 month summer break where they lose a lot of what they have learned, and it helps the troubled students with attending and excelling in school. It is believed that over the long 3 month summer break students forget a lot of what they have learned in the past school year.
One of the pros of year round schools is that it shortens breaks to improve the child's academic achievement. A child who has long breaks can have summer learning loss. They lower in their academic scores. A study show that over the break a child experiences a “slide” or when they go down in their academic scores. It shows that over a long summer
The traditional ten-month school program that the local school board currently implements should be reconsidered. If the concern of student's performance on standardized testing is important to the school, implementing a year-round school program instead could be beneficial to student's capabilities of doing well with standardized testing. A year-round school calendar has just as many days as the traditional school calendar, but is spread throughout the year. A year-round school program should be implemented for many different reasons, students tend to forget a lot of what they learned over summer break, so shorter breaks would prevent a greater loss of intelligence, and more time would be available to teach students new skills, students would also be
Over the course of a typical U.S. summer vacation, which is approximately two and a half months long, students can lose precious weeks and months of learning. According to Oxford Learning, “2.6 months of math skills, and two months of reading skills are lost over the summer” (“Summer”). The loss of information and skills over summer vacation is not only detrimental to students, but also negatively affects teachers, who must adjust the curriculum to compensate. The same study by Oxford Learning also concluded, “Six weeks in the fall are spent re-learning old material to make up for summer learning loss” (Summer). The illogical set-up of the agrarian American school year is not only inefficient, but it also produces achievement gaps between different demographics within the country. According to Motoko Rich’s article, “To Increase Learning Time, Some Schools Add Days to Academic Year,” during the summer break, “Students — particularly those from low-income families — tend to forget what they learned in the school year. Getting back to school early, supporters of a longer calendar say, is one of the best ways to narrow an achievement gap between rich and poor students” (Rich). The achievement gap created in the current system causes countless students to suffer through losing and having to relearn skills and