Year-round School Schedule

The idea of a year-round school schedule has been one of the most hotly debated educational issues of the last decade. It is, at first, difficult to believe that such a seemingly sensible and innocuous proposition would arouse any public passion at all. Yet, every time the subject is brought up in a school district, it is greeted with such an outcry that one would think the right to vote rather than the right to vacation was being challenged. In this essay, I will examine exactly what the year-round school calendar entails, why we may need it, and what the main arguments for and against it are. Finally, I will offer an evaluation of the concept and give an opinion on its viability.

There are two basic types of year-round school schedules, with a number of variations within each category. The first type is a single-track system in which all students attend at the same time. A good example of this system exists at Buena Vista High School in Virginia, where the 12-month calendar is divided into three mandatory quarters and one optional. tuition-free summer quarter. This system was instituted in 1973, and although many were skeptical about the program at first, a recent survey indicates that a majority of parents, students, and teachers are now in favor of it. The current community support is not surprising when one considers the fact that the number of Buena Vista graduates going on to college has almost doubled since the year-round system began. ("How Not," 1990)

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has safeguards to ensure that friends and siblings have synchronized vacations by assigning students to one track or another by geographical area. Walters also says that in the schools in which the year-round calendar is in effect, he has noticed marked improvements in attendance and far fewer discipline problems than before. (Gitlin, 1988) Other positive consequences of year-round school are attested to by the teachers involved in these programs. They state that less crowded classrooms mean they can spend more time with each individual student, and that shorter vacation breaks mean less time is wasted on review of old material. This is because the students generally remember what they were taught two or three weeks ago, but not what they were taught three months ago. The average teacher in a traditional school reports spending the entire first month of school simply reviewing last year's material. ("What Educators," 1988) Academic records have yet to prove conclusively that year-round schools actually improve learning, but one University of Southern California study of California Achievement Test scores found that the students from year-round schools scored significantly higher than those attending regular schools. (Gitlin

Category: Psychology - Y