Why I hate year-round school, and what’s the alternative?
I really like having summer for kids. Each year, I see the growth. A growth made possible because of the rites of passage as summer both begins and ends. Just this week, I see them interacting with their school buddies after they switched to interacting with their neighborhood, summer camp, summer school, or other non-school friends.
Could they have similar rites of passage without the traditional American summer? Maybe, but not so fast. I mean, France has “Les grandes vacances”, the summer holiday or August Vacation, and many countries have something similar. Why re-invent the wheel?
Trimester? 15 weeks x3 45 weeks? With 7 weeks of break?
Quarters? 4 11-week sessions? With 8 weeks of break?
Or, how about returning to the tried and true?
Give the national and generational shared experience of a school year & summer that uses Labor Day and Memorial Day as their encapsulation boundaries.
Summer is Memorial day to Labor day!!! Yay!
School is Labor Day to Memorial day!!! Oh My!
Now, the negatives….
We require more days of education, and that eliminates those days. Let’s assess that loss. Most states require 180 days per year. There are two issues:
The number of weeks between January 2 and Memorial Day is ~21, and between Labor Day and the Winter Solstice is ~17. That’s a 4-week difference. We do lose a week (5 days) in the spring for spring break, and only 3 days in the fall for Thanksgiving break. We also tend to have more holidays in the spring. Let’s reduce that to 19 weeks in the spring. That gives us a 2-week difference; 17 + 19 at 5 days a week gives us exactly 180 days.
Now, what about unscheduled days off, other holidays, and in-service days? That would leave us with less than the required 180 days. Let’s make up for that with a summer intersession. Why else might we want a summer intersession?
With Summer’s off, there are 3 issues people raise:
- Students lose too much knowledge
- Parents need to work
- Kids become delinquents
I have issues with all three.
A: Knowledge Loss: Let’s have a summer session and summer homework to address the knowledge loss. If someone struggles, they can have a longer set of summer classes.
B: Parents need to work: This applies mostly to younger or high-maintenance students. Programs can be developed or offered for these groups. Summer school, summer camps, etc. Some would argue that they are supplementing the poor! Well, what did you expect? You/we are not paying them a living wage to purchase summer care or have a one-income household/stay at home parent; otherwise, you complain they are a welfare family. We can’t have it both ways. We need work that pays a living wage. Check out how our taxes are paying for many companies’ low wages. i.e., Walmart, a company that’s undercutting our small business owners’ prices only to underpay employees; and many fast food companies. All of which rely on employees getting supplemental income through Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Housing Support, among other services. Either way, can we offer year-round classes/programs to youth under 11 years of age? At what age have youth traditionally been able to start staying home on their own. That was the age the Red Cross offered babysitting classes to. Granted, at 11, the general rule was that they could do only a 2-hour continuous babysitting session, which increased as they aged.
C: Kids being delinquents: Kids can be delinquents during the school year just as easily. If you want to rein them in by losing the privilege of a summer break, or by having a more limited summer break, or otherwise adding more structure, so be it. They can have more days of summer school. There are plenty of options.
On to the summer intersession option
Let’s start with my preferred option: a 2-week intersession.
Why?
First, this adds 10 days to the school year. That means instead of a tight 180 days, you now have 190 days to play with.
Second, it brings learning and potentially a reduction in knowledge loss over the summer.
Third, it allows for a unifying, shared national summer experience from Memorial Day to Labor Day. This 12-week summer break will hopefully bring people together and add shared nostalgia.
This 3-month break allows teachers to take a 12-week summer break, which is one reason many teachers choose to teach. After all, we already have a teacher shortage; why make it harder to get teachers? An easy option that doesn’t add strain to tight school systems and state budgets.
This also allows some teachers to continue working over the summer. For grades 6-12, this means an ~85% reduction in the workforce.
Other options
Wait, didn’t you say six summer sessions? Isn’t that only an 83% reduction in utilization? Yes and no! Not all students are required to us a school sponsored summer program. They can qualify for many other APPROVED programs.
Approved programs?
Yes, summer camps, Vacation Bible School, a week at the Smithsonian, or other approved educational opportunities paired with summer reading, along with reports and tests/skill/knowledge verification systems. Other opportunities can be parks like Joshua Tree, Yosemite, Yellowstone, or local nature centers. These on their own may not be enough, but paired together, they may qualify as a replacement for the school’s summer program.
They all require thinking, reading, writing, research, etc. Take a look at camps; if it’s nature-based, they can have specific educational aspects; if it’s space camp, math camp, maybe a debate camp or similar, these are all highly thought-based and help keep the student’s engaged thereby reducing knowledge loss.
Plus?
Each district can have some specific requirements for all students. Maybe everyone needs some reading & writing, a little math, and some research outside of those programs. After all, if one argues that there is knowledge loss in the summer, an early or late 2-week session leads to 10 other weeks of loss. You can assign these each month to spread out the learning. These would continue lessons from the previous year while preparing the student for the upcoming school year.
Conclusion
A:
I love seeing the youth grow each year as they experience the rites of passage, milestones, and coming-of-age experiences each year brings. A summer transition brings not just new milestones, but new beginnings you don’t typically notice in a simple transition from one grade to the next. A simple ceremony is not enough. Ending a school year gives you that “I’m now a year older” feeling, but beginning a new year brings the knuckle-down phase. You grow over the summer, and things become formal when the new year starts. It’s like a butterfly; a reset where you “shed off the old”!
I love the new freedoms I see people explore each summer & the fresh new things they get to start the new year in the fall as they begin fresh, often forging new friendships and growing in each phase.
B:
Final Conclusion, let’s unify the country with the shared experience of a common Memorial Day to Labor Day summer while not losing educational knowledge
P.S. What about that ODD extra two-week period we see in the spring semester?
Maybe we should have a 2-week winter intersession too? A single 2-week; it’s now a new calendar year. Maybe have short projects. A math club intensive, a book report week. Shop class project, try xyz out as we take a two-week sabbatical to get ready to knuckle down for the spring.
The same thing for spring vs fall today! Why are we going into June vs. starting in August?
I definitely prefer keeping the winter break as the separator between semesters. This is even true today. I HATE HATE HATE schools going into June. If you need an extra couple of weeks to ensure 180 days in the school year, add them to the fall semester, which is already 2 weeks shorter. After all, by mid august, they are anxious and ready to begin a fresh new year, while expecting them to return and knuckle down for two weeks after the long Memorial Day holiday weekend is hard. It almost becomes a useless 2 weeks, whereas in the fall, they are ready to learn or at least can use the 2 weeks to transition back into the routine of the school year.
Back to the question of year round school…
What would we do: Quarters or trimesters?
With 180 days, we’re looking at 36 five-day weeks, plus two for buffer, that’s 38 weeks. Would we increase that more? We have 12 weeks in the summer, but as we noted, most districts use a couple of weeks in June or August to reach the required 180 days. (17+ 19 weeks = 36 weeks confirms that’s the current reasoning) Thus, let’s reduce that 12-week summer by 4 weeks to allow for some transition breaks. We’re now at 8 weeks in the summer.
We just assumed a couple of things
We just added 8 weeks of education. That’s 230 vs. 190 of the current 180-day requirement.
Undoing that assumption…
Should we switch to a 4-day week? Missouri has done that and added 45 minutes to the school day. With the 46 weeks above, if we opt for a 4-day week, we would have 184 of the 180 days currently required. That allows us to make up lost days by adding some Mondays to the schedule.
Ok, now how to break it down
46 weeks in 3 parts. . . That is 3 fifteen-week sessions. Ok, that’s 15.3333 weeks; round that down and give us an extra vacation week somewhere. Summer, winter, fall- it doesn’t matter. Between sessions or mid-session, that’s up to the district. I can’t say what’s better here. I do know that 3 15-week sessions bring us back down to 225 days from 230 or exactly 180 days with a 4-day week.
Let’s say 46 weeks in 4 parts instead. This gives us 4 eleven-week sessions. Ok, technically 11.5-week sessions. Using this method, we can break it down to 11 weeks and add two weeks of vacation, which gives us 44 weeks in a year. That means ~220 days of a 180-day requirement. We can add plenty of mid-semester breaks and stay in compliance. 44 weeks in a year gives us 8 weeks off, less than our current 12-week summer break, along with the fall, spring, and Christmas/winter breaks.
Finally, how about 4 ten-week sessions? This gives nice round numbers. Each quarter has an obvious 5-week midpoint. With the current 38-week year, quarters are typically about 9 weeks in length, very similar to the 10 weeks proposed here. This means a 200-day year. With about 12 weeks off scattered around the year. 2 weeks between each session is 8 weeks; add a mid-session break, and you’re at 12 weeks. A district might break it down with several 4-day weeks. You can keep the 12 break weeks and still have several 4-day weeks if you keep the 180-day requirement. But then you run into challenges with those breaks… Check them out below.
The major challenge vs the benefit: Those pseudo-random breaks
Ok, they are not random. They come between terms, and maybe mid-term, but while they have benefits, they come with challenges too.
This spreading out of breaks definitely minimizes knowledge loss, but it makes it harder for parents who need child assistance. A single summer block has an industry built around it. They have weeks of daycare, summer school, or camps. Many of these, as noted, can already minimize knowledge loss if requirements were in place.
Spreading these out may also add challenges to the travel industry. With more standard short breaks, people will travel in those smaller windows, making parks, camps, and travel options bipolar in use. During the breaks, they will be inundated with business, and devoid of business in the off weeks. With seasons, you have consecutive blocks where employees can work there and, conversely, work elsewhere in the “Off-Season.” Camp counselors can be senior campers/high schoolers working during their own 12-week summer vacation vs. being pulled in cold for various off-school weeks.
