Recently Davidson County became one of the Tennessee counties looking at a “balanced school year.” This new buzz phrase describes what was previously called “year round school.” Year round school sounded too frightening to too many people, so new terminology had to be developed.
Like many changes, a “balanced school year” sounds ideal. First, kids would start school much earlier (like July?), then have a week off in the fall, a week off at Thanksgiving, two weeks over Christmas and New Year’s, two weeks off in the spring, and get out about the third week in May. Some school systems already on this type of schedule have two weeks off together in the fall and the regular Thanksgiving days off. The loudest claim for this type of schedule is that children are supposed to forget less with only six weeks off in summer than the normal eight or twelve weeks in some schedules.
People on both sides of the question are passionate about their feelings that it will either be the best thing since chicken soup or the worst catastrophe ever. Just like most decisions facing public and private schools, extending the school year has its good points and its bad.
Proponents point to studies that lead one to believe that student achievement improves. Opponents reveal that many of these studies are based on faulty statistics gained from studies that compare too few samples or based their conclusions on meaningless comparisons. One often-quoted study stated that math scores were higher between two schools, one of which was on the regular schedule and the other on a “year-round path.” No mention was made of the fact that one might have had better math scores than the other.
Any thinking person can determine that many researchers are looking for a specific answer and then manage to find evidence that this conclusion is true. In other words, statistics have long been used as propaganda.
Here are some of the basic reasons for extending the school year:
- Saving money by not having to build more schools. This works when multiple schedules are available so that various groups of students have vacations at different times. Obviously, if parents have kids in alternate programs, these families are going to have difficulties.
- Spreading out payouts to employees. Bus drivers in Nashville were opposed to the “balanced school year” because they would have more months when they would receive only two weeks of pay and would have less time in the summer to work extra jobs to make ends meet. It takes little common sense to realize that jumping into a part time job for two weeks in the fall or spring is just not an option for many people. Now that bus drivers are up in arms over the shorter hours they are to work, this subject seems to have been dropped!
- Saving money overall. It has been reported that it actually costs significantly more to extend the school year—and any Tennessean knows that people just don’t want to pay more taxes whether it’s for schools or almost anything else.
- Having vacations during “off season” times. In Robertson County where I live, we have a week of vacation in the fall and a week in the spring—and that’s wonderful. When we start school during the hot months of August and September, both adults and children need a week of break after the first nine weeks from sheer physical, if not mental, exhaustion. Tennessee summer temperatures can be draining. Sports teams practicing in high heat have also had young athletes suffer heat stroke or even death. Starting in July would be adding even more risk. Also, in spite of the opportunity to have a fall or spring vacation, some working parents find it difficult to get day care for a brief time because many centers already are filled prior to these vacation days. Other people prefer to have longer times in the summer in order to schedule vacations when their turn in their work agenda comes up. What works for some people just doesn’t for others.
- Proponents of a longer school year feel that children forget what they have learned over summer break so they benefit from shorter times off from school. On the other hand, having even one extra day off from school can cause many students to lose focus. Most teachers will tell you that keeping children focused is one of the main problems in the classroom today. The excitement of vacation days or snow days or holidays leads many students to lose what tenuous focus they already have. Increasing numbers of students have shorter and shorter attention spans, whether that’s due to watching minute-long commercials or playing instant video games or whatever; getting and keeping them on track is a full time job. Children with any time of attention deficit are even more at risk. The answer to this problem does not appear to be more frequent times away from school.
- A two-month break in summer should be as good as a three-month break.
Sounds good on paper, but if you are a teacher who needs to go back to school yourself in summer, you may have a difficult time. Two summers ago I had to take two classes at Austin Peay to complete Tennessee requirements for certification. They were offered only during the second summer session. I took my final exams early on a Tuesday in August and started teaching the next day. Had we started teaching in July, it would have been impossible to take the classes I needed. This is only one example of summer scheduling difficulties. Many children go to special camps in the summer or vacation with large family groups at a specific time. Other children go to a four-week summer school to make up academic deficits or to take accelerated courses not offered during the regular school year. These students would have perhaps only a two-week “summer.” - It doesn’t matter when school is out because people will learn to adjust. Quite a few coaches have issues with that point of view when they try to schedule games with other schools on the traditional system. When school schedules don’t match, sports teams either play during vacations (not popular with parents who plan vacations then), or lose out on some opportunities for some tournaments or other special activities.
Davidson County Schools decided against the “balanced school year” because it needed further study. I think they made a good decision.
Education has a long history of jumping on band wagons. We had “new” math, individualized instruction, schools without walls and many other experiments that have been tried and abandoned. The nature of education is experimentation. New ideas can enhance learning; every educator must keep an open mind to expanding possibilities because that’s how we learn.
On the other hand, plunging into a new system before all aspects are examined is not necessarily a good choice. Making a major change in the time and weeks that children go to school requires thinking in and out of the box. It’s not the reason that children learn or fail to learn.
Education is a great deal more complicated than that.
The extended or year round school schedule will keep the children from forgetting everything they learned, because just one day off for most of the children and they lose what they have learned…plus what are the parents to do with the youngsters and preteens, the ones who are too young for day care.. since they cant be left alone at home because both parents are working. School provides a place for them to be, being supervised and in a contained environment, until someone can pick them up. Childrens’ brains are like sponges..underdeveloped as it is with the hurried, short school curriculum. They can take on and learn faster than adults and therefore, their brains are not being utilized to their fullest potential. Children do not get mentally wore down going to school five days a week. They dont need a so called “rest”. They are entitled to holiday breaks already and forget what they have learned already and cant focus in school, per some teachers. Adults have to work 5-7 days a week and only have maybe every weekend to recover..