Year-round Schools

A number of schools in the nation have started operating on a year-round basis. In 1991 the National Association for Year-Round Education estimated that 736,000 students in 859 public and 13 private schools were attending year-round schools, and this was a 40 percent increase over the previous year's figures. Generally, the year-round school was seen as a way of making more efficient use of space and resources. It had also been adopted as a way of coping with overcrowding. Los Angeles shifted to year-round schooling in order to save space, and by staggering schedules among four separate "tracks," the schools could keep a fourth of the students on vacation at any one time and therefore increase capacity. Another reason that has bene offered is educational rather than economic. Buena Vista, Virginia, adopted the system in order to improve curriculum offerings, cut spending on remedia

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xtracurricular activities, and disrupt families whose children might be on different tracks (Armstrong, 1993, 4). Any schedule inconveniences some people, but it is true that the year-round schedule could offer many of the disruptions noted above. Addressing some of the objections may depend on the way the program is developed. For one thing, there is no reason why there has to be only one type of year-round school. Different systems, districts, or schools might offer a more flexible program that fits with the specific needs of the community. Greater coordination between the schools and the community could prevent some of the child-care problems by providing incentive for winter camp through some sort of pool of students. the problem of having children in a family on different tracks could be eliminated if the schools had to coordinate within a family so that all the children of a family were on the same track. One school that innovated in order to overcome problems seen in the year-round approach is that of Beacon Schools in Oakland, California. This school has a longer schedule than the norm by some 35 to 60 days a year, a schedule believed to reduce summer learning loss. A two-week period for family vacations is sche
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Approximate Word count = 1849
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)