Year Round Schools

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Year-Round Schooling

Should the U.S. Switch to Year-Round Schooling?

The traditional school year, with roughly three months of vacation time every summer, was first implemented when America was primarily an agricultural society.  We have changed as a nation; today, over 2 million U.S. students attend school on year-round schedules every year in around 3,000 schools in 46 states — and the majority of U.S. K-12 students aren’t spending summers off tilling fields or harvesting crops. The question is, should the American school system switch to year-round schooling?

The phenomena known as the “summer slide,” where students actually lose knowledge with too much time away from school, coupled with kids who must spend those months in camps or child care due to working parents, are two reasons proponents of year-round schooling cite as it needing to implemented nationwide.

As with all change, certain considerations will arise and must be addressed, though. Making the switch would not be easy for students, teachers or their parents – but is it best?  Here are three important considerations when considering year-round schooling as a nationwide norm.

1. How are the students affected? 

Foremost, we must examine the impact a year-round school schedule has on the people it most affects – the students.   A long-time thorn in the side of K-12 educators has been the above mentioned “summer slide.” The National Summer Learning Association often cites decades of research that support the claim that students really do forget or unlearn things they have learned when too much time off is given between classroom sessions.  A study released in 2007 by The Ohio State University, however, found that there are really no differences in learning between students who attend school year-round, and those who are on a traditional schedule.

While the overall student numbers show no significant differences in learning for better or worse, at-risk students tend to do better in year-round setups. Studies have found that disadvantaged students lose about 27 percent more of their learning gains in the summer months than their peers. By being in school the same number of days, but with shorter breaks, these students are able to keep their minds on a learning track that may not otherwise be fostered at home in the off-months.

2.  How are the teachers affected?

Every job comes with its share of headaches and at one point or another, employees in all industries claim that they are “burned out.” Teaching is unique when it comes to burn out, though, because an unmotivated, exhausted teacher has a direct effect on the young people in his or her classroom. Summers off has long been the light at the end of the tunnel for teachers, particularly in urban areas with higher discipline problems and overcrowded classrooms. In a year-round setting, lengthy breaks are gone, replaced with shorter, more frequent ones instead. Though the loss of those summer months may at first seem like a drawback, many teachers end up liking greater frequency in time off. With shorter, more concentrated spurts of instruction, teachers can exert more energy and face the daily struggles with the hope that there will be relief soon. There is still as much time off, but it is more evenly distributed.

One important consideration for teachers is the effect of year-round schooling on their pocket books.In most scenarios, teachers make the same amount of money in their districts whether they work at a year-round or traditional school, though the pay schedules may differ. Teachers who made extra money teaching summer school still have that option in year-round districts that offer remedial courses during break periods. Where some teachers see the biggest economic cut when they teach year-round is in the three months of summer that other teachers often seek out part-time or seasonal work. Based on the type of work, this could mean a loss of income in the thousands every year. For teachers satisfied with holding down just one job and paycheck, a year-round schedule may not have any economic impact on their families at all.

3.  How does year-round schooling affect the economy? 

Each individual community will feel a different economic impact when it comes to year-round schooling. A tourist community with summer attractions, for example, may feel more of a squeeze if its low-cost employee pool of high school students is suddenly in class instead. The same could be said for ski communities though that could benefit from multi-track scheduling of high school students during its busiest seasons. The summer months tend to be when most high school students earn the most money, however, because there is a significant duration of time with no school responsibilities. Without those months of a steady paycheck, students (and parents) stand to lose potential college money. Trying to work and maintain a job alongside classes can have a negative impact on grades according to most research and most employers cannot accommodate students who are only available two or three week spans at a time.

So the potential economic cost of year-round schooling is two-fold: the individual student may suffer financially, and the local businesses may have to pay out more for jobs that are better-suited for high school students who do not have the time off to work them.

What other considerations do you associate with year-round schooling?

 

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Year-Round Schooling: How it Affects Students

The traditional school year, with roughly three months of vacation days every summer was first implemented when America was an agricultural society. The time off was not implemented to accommodate contemporary concerns, like children needing “downtime” to decompress and “be kids,” but was born out of economic necessity. In fact, the first schools that went against the summers-off version of the academic calendar were in urban areas that did not revolve around the agricultural calendar, like Chicago and New York, as early as the mid-1800s. It was much later, however, that the idea as a whole gained momentum.

A survey of school decision-makers in 1971 found that 84 percent of respondents felt that year-round schooling would be in all U.S. schools within the next 15 years. As we know now, those respondents were wrong, but it makes sense that they would feel that way. Two districts in San Diego were the first to implement year-round academic calendars in 1971, and by 1974, there were another 13 in the state that followed suit. Even today, California and its neighbors lead the year-round trend, with four-fifths of all of these school schedules in the nation happening in Western states. Over half of them are implemented in California. In total, over 2 million U.S. students attend school on year-round schedules every year in around 3,000 schools in 46 states.

So what impact does this non-traditional school schedule have on the people it most affects – the students?

Academic strides

A long-time thorn in the side of K-12 educators has been the “summer slide,” or the theory that knowledge is lost when students get so much time off (like in the summer months) from academic pursuits. The National Summer Learning Association often cites decades of research that support the claim that students do forget or unlearn things they have learned when too much time off is given between classroom sessions. A study released in 2007 by The Ohio State University, however, found that there are no differences in learning between students who attend school year-round, and those who are on a traditional schedule.

While the overall student numbers show no significant differences in learning for better or worse, at-risk students tend to do better in year-round setups. Studies have found that disadvantaged students lose about 27 percent more of their learning gains in the summer months than their peers. By being in school the same number of days, but with shorter breaks, these students can keep their minds on a learning track that may not otherwise be fostered at home in the off-months.

Socialization

In districts that use year-round schedules, there are two models: single track and multi-track. In the latter, students are in groups that place them on different schedules and different vacation times. The main benefit of dividing students in this way is that those who need extra or remedial help can attend school on the off days since there are still teachers on campus. It is similar to the concept of summer school, but takes place throughout the year and may only require one or two weeks here and there, instead of an entire summer’s time.

Parents are split into two groups when it comes to the way students’ socialization is impacted by year-round schooling. Some say that kids seem more interested in school without the stop-and-go routine of traditional academic calendars. Others complain that students on year-round schedules, particularly multi-track ones, miss out on time with their friends and come to resent school as a result. Overall, the social growth of students is thought not to change much since they are still in session the same number of days each year and have shorter gaps in time apart from their peers.

Overall, year-round schooling seems to show a slight advantage academically to students enrolled, but the numbers of students are not high enough to get a good read on it at this point. What does seem clear, however, is that at-risk students do fare better without a long summer break, and the year-round schedule does not harm other students.

Next, I will look at the way year-round schooling impacts the teaching profession.

Do you think year-round schooling benefits or harms students?

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Matthew Lynch published in Ask An Expert, Matthew Lynch

Ask An Expert: What are the Benefits and Drawbacks of Year Round Schools?

Question: I am considering taking an accounting job with a district that has year round schools. Since I am unfamiliar with the concept, I would like to know what the benefits and drawbacks are. Me and my husband have 3 school aged children, and we want to do what’s best for them. Virginia S.

Answer: Virginia, first of all, congratulations on the job offer. I know that it must be difficult for you and your husband to consider exposing your children to something that is unfamiliar. In this column, I will explain the benefits and drawbacks of year round schools, which will help you make a more informed decision concerning your job offer.

Many school districts around the country are in fact working toward extending the school year. As far as the benefits of year round schools, the shift in the time designated for teaching and learning helps students achieve more by minimizing summer learning loss, allowing for innovation and implementation of creative programs, and providing the time needed to assist children who need extra help.

Research seems to back up these claims, as it shows that time may be the most essential resource of the education system. However, it is important to recognize that merely  extending the school year is not a panacea for improving student performance. It is necessary to utilize the available time in the best possible manner. If educators fail to convert the available time to quality teaching and learning time, the increased school year will not improve student performance.

While I have pointed out the many benefits of a longer school year, there are also some drawbacks. The major drawback is the assumed detriment to family structure. American families have become accustomed to the traditional long summer vacation. Parents may find it difficult to schedule vacations and family reunions. This concern is not to be dismissed, as it is important to children’s development to spend quality time with their families.

Childcare could also become a concern, particularly if multiple, shorter school vacations were scheduled throughout the year, at times when parents are working. Extracurricular activities are another dimension of schooling that can be negatively influenced by year-round schooling. Teachers managing extracurricular activities have observed difficulties adapting these activities into a year-round schooling schedule.

Another area of concern when adapting to year-round schooling schedules is its effect on the administration. School administrators have sometimes found it difficult to deal with licensure and contractual issues of the teachers when working out schedules for year-round schools. It can also be difficult to plan the optimal use of school buildings. Of course, a serious issue is finding ways to best leverage this new, extended school year to increase quality instruction time. In short, year-round schools require the administrative blocks of schools to keep working throughout the year, which increases the administrative burden.

At the end of the day, you have to compare and contrast the benefits and drawbacks of year round schools with your families situation. Do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks or vice versa? I hope my column will assist you and your husband in making an informed decision. Good luck, and let me know how it goes.

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Year-Round Schooling: 3 Common Arguments against It

In my last post, I talked about the reasons I feel that teachers should get behind the push to support year-round schooling and how more consistent time in the classroom will lead to higher student performance, boosting teacher accountability ratings and accommodating a much more streamlined education process. Today I want to look at the common reasons that people are against switching from a summers-off school calendar to a year-round schooling model.

Rising costs

The summer months are typically the highest ones for energy consumption. In fact, the average electricity bill for homeowners in the summer months goes up 4 to 8 percent. The same concept would be true of schools. Having empty classrooms in the summer months means less money going out to air conditioning and prevents other warm-weather costs from hitting school utility budgets. It may seem like a minor point, but an increase in utility bills for one-quarter of the year really could hurt schools’ bottom lines.

Not enough “down time”

Some childhood development experts believe that particularly when it comes to younger students, time off in the summer months is a vital component of healthy development. The argument follows that kids are not designed to spend so much of their time inside classroom walls and that the warmer, pleasant weather of the summer provides a perfect opportunity to get outside and experience childhood. The problem with this argument, of course, is that most children are not spending their summers frolicking in fields of flowers or running around their neighborhoods, hanging out with other kids.

The days of kids spending their summers outside, communing with nature and getting plenty of exercise, are long past. A recent Harvard University study found that school-age children tend to gain weight at a faster pace during the summer months than during the school year, a fact attributed to more time spent in sedentary activities like watching television or using mobile devices instead of being outside or participating in active pursuits. Not only must K-12 students relearn the academic items, but they must also shift their mentalities from less-active, sedentary ones to sharp, alert learning models – and teachers face the brunt of this responsibility.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports that by the time children graduate from high school, they will have spent more time watching television than in classrooms. What’s more – children who watch an excessive amount of television generally have lower grades in school, read fewer books and have more health problems. While some children visit summer camps, or attend child care when school is out, others stay at home, inside, with not much else to do than watch TV or play games on electronic devices. This is especially true for kids who are middle-school age or higher and are able to stay home alone when parents work. The “down time” of the summer months is really just empty time, often void of anything academically or developmentally advantageous.

Scheduling adjustments

For parents with children of different ages and in different schools, a year-round schedule could present serious scheduling issues. This argument assumes that schools would actually adhere to different time off schedules – something that seemingly could be adjusted so that all schools within a particular district or geographic area were on the same schedule. There is also the child care debate that says it would be difficult for working parents to find babysitters for one or two weeks at a time every few months, as opposed to three months straight in the summer. Again though, the market adjusts with demand and it seems to me that child care centers and camps would offer programs when students needed them. Just because those programs are not available now does not mean they would not exist when families were willing to pay for them.

The most common arguments against year-round schooling seem like a stretch, at best. They are based on assumptions that are not entirely grounded and reek more of the fear of change than of actual concern.

What arguments against year-round schooling do you hear? What ones do you agree with?

 

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Matthew Lynch published in list, Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform, Year-Round Schooling

Top 3 Reasons the US Should Switch to Year-Round Schooling

The traditional school year, with roughly three months of vacation days every summer, was first implemented when America was an agricultural society. Learning to read, write, and perform basic arithmetic in classrooms was simply not as important as keeping up family farms and building the nation. The summer months were needed exclusively for farm work.

Since then, we have completely changed as a nation—today, the majority of U.S. K-12 students aren’t spending summers off tilling fields or harvesting crops. However, the idea of summers off from school is alive and well. The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research finds that the average American student receives 13 weeks off of school each calendar year – with 10 or 11 of those coming consecutively during the summer. Barely any other countries have more than seven weeks off in a school calendar. Only around 10 percent of U.S. schools currently use a year-round school calendar with shorter breaks inserted throughout the year.

With the US lagging behind countries such as Korea in terms of academic performance, it may be time to consider drastic changes to our public school system. Year-round schooling might just be a solution—and surprisingly, it could even be one that students will enjoy. Here’s why:

  1. Students will actually remember what they learn.

Year-round schooling means that students do not fall victim to the “summer slide,” or the well-documented phenomenon where students unlearn some of the knowledge they worked so hard to attain when too much consecutive time is taken off from school.

A study released in 2007 by The Ohio State University found that there are really no differences in learning between students who attend school year round and those who are on a traditional schedule. However, the National Summer Learning Association often cites decades of research that shows that it can take anywhere from 8 to 13 weeks at the beginning of every school year for teachers to get their students back up to speed and ready to learn the new grade’s material.

Either way, when it comes to learning and retention, students who attend year-round schools have nothing to lose and much to gain.

  1. It’s an easy way to bridge the achievement gap.

Minority students, students who speak English as a second language, economically disadvantaged students, and students with disabilities are the most affected by the summer fallback. Studies have found that disadvantaged students lose about 27 percent more of their learning gains in the summer months than their peers.

If that is not enough to affirm the need for year-round schooling for minorities, researcher Daniel O’Brien concluded that minority students progress their learning proficiency the fastest during the school year when compared to white and economically advantaged students.

Furthermore, Anna Habash of Education Trust, a nonprofit that works with schools to better serve their student populations, says that for minorities, a year-round school schedule does more than help academically. In an interview with Education News, Habash said that schools with high numbers of poverty and minority students benefit greatly from year-round schooling because it keep students “on task” and leads to more “meaningful instruction” when there are not a lot of academically sound options at home.

Minorities also drop out of high school at rates that are higher than their white counterparts. According to Jessica Washington of Politic365, the solution is year-round schooling. She reports that the national dropout rate is 5 percent, while the dropout rate for year-round school students is just 2 percent. These dropout statistics are not broken down by racial or socioeconomic backgrounds, but if the overall dropout rate is lower for year-round schools, it is likely that the minority dropout rates in this model are also lower. The reasons why dropout rates are lower in year-round setups are easy to deduce: students have less time to adjust to time off from school, and in the case of high schoolers, they have less time to work.

While this inability for teenagers to work and make money in the summer has been cited as a pitfall of year-round schooling, the disadvantages of this are short-lived. High school graduates earn $11,000 more per year than those with a G.E.D. or less, and that number rises to $36,000 more with a bachelor’s degree. Giving up a few summers of minimum wage work in exchange for the higher lifetime earnings a high school diploma affords is a small price to pay.

  1. Students will actually like school.

Students will do more than just learn better in a year-round school.

Teachers and students experience a closer relationship in year-round schools than they do in traditional, shorter-calendar-year schools. In the absence of any long-term break from school, students do not feel detached from the school environment.

The experience of immersion in learning offered by year-round schools, with more time spent in classrooms, proves to be beneficial to many students from low socioeconomic backgrounds in particular, including those for whom English is a second language. Many second language learners who have difficulty mastering English benefit from the opportunity to immerse themselves in English during intersession classes. They also develop better relationships with other students.

Results from research studies show that students in year-round schools are more self-confident, have a higher self-concept, have fewer inhibitions, and feel positive about their schooling experience.

But what about down time? Don’t children need time to just “be kids”?

Some childhood development experts believe that for younger students, time off in the summer months is vital to healthy development. They believe that kids are not designed to spend so much of their time inside classroom walls and that the warmer, pleasant weather of the summer provides a perfect opportunity to get outside and experience childhood. The problem with this argument, of course, is that most children are no longer spending their summers frolicking in fields of flowers or running around their neighborhoods, hanging out with other kids.

A recent Harvard University study found that school-age children tend to gain weight at a faster pace during the summer months than during the school year. Children today spend more time in sedentary activities like watching television or using mobile devices instead of playing outside or participating in active pursuits. Not only must K-12 students relearn the academic items, but they must also shift their mentalities from less-active, sedentary ones to sharp, alert learning models.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports that by the time children graduate from high school, they will have spent more time watching television than in classrooms. What’s more – children who watch an excessive amount of television generally have lower grades in school, read fewer books and have more health problems. While some children visit summer camps, or attend child care when school is out, others stay at home, inside, with not much else to do than watch TV or play games on electronic devices. This is especially true for kids who are middle-school age or higher and are able to stay home alone when parents work. The “down time” of the summer months is really just empty time, often void of anything academically or developmentally advantageous.

As the US establishes itself as a knowledge and innovation-based economy, the usefulness of a traditional school year diminishes. There are many reasons changing from our traditional school year to year-round schooling makes sense. As with any adjustments, making the switch would not be easy. However, with all its advantages, it is certainly worth considering.

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Year-Round Schooling: Why it’s Time to Change

When public schools first started popping up in the U.S., they were considered secondary to other hands-on pursuits. Learning to read, write and perform basic arithmetic in classrooms was not equal to or greater than the actual work of building the nation and keeping up family farms.

Even when a basic public school education became a relative priority, the school calendar revolved around agriculture – a necessity of the American way of life. Three months off in the summer months was not mandated because students needed “down time” or free creative play or time to decompress from the pressures of their studies. Those months off were full of even more work, and little free time, and plenty of hard work for the sake of the family and the nation.

Though family farms as a whole have become an antiquated piece of American history, the idea of summers off from school is still alive and well. The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research finds that the average American student receives 13 weeks off of school each calendar year – with 10 or 11 of those coming consecutively during June, July and August (approximately) – while barely any other countries have more than seven weeks off in a school calendar. Around 10 percent of U.S. schools have transitioned to a year-round school calendar with shorter breaks inserted throughout the year but the majority of schools in the U.S. still follow a summers-off schedule.

But why? There is no perilous economic reason that keeping children in school during the summer would be detrimental, and there is no medical reason that three consecutive months during the center of the calendar year are necessary for the healthy development of children. The reason the school year remains in a summers-off state is simple: it is easier than changing it. That mentality begins with teachers in the classroom and escalates to educational policymakers. Changing the ways things have always been, even if there is some pretty solid evidence that it would improve things, is too cumbersome – so why bother?

Why Teachers Don’t Want Year-Round Schooling

One of the first issues educators raise when the idea of year-round schooling arises is getting rid of summers off. Theoretically if nothing about the school calendar changed except the timing of the days off, teachers and administrators would still have the same amount of time off but it would be spread out over 12 months more evenly. Most educators will admit that they enjoy having at least three consecutive months each year to themselves, without the demands of being around children for seven hours every day and spending their evenings deep in grading or lesson planning. Many teachers take advantage of the time off to seek out other avenues of employment, to supplement their annual incomes. It’s doubtful that these teachers would be able to find the same level of employment during one or two week breaks scattered throughout the year, and it’s hard to say if those shorter spurts would allow enough time to for the mental decompression teachers need to perform their important jobs to the best of their abilities.

I believe that the benefit to teachers of year-round schooling would far outweigh these inconveniences, though. The pressure to have high-performing students is the bane of every teacher’s existence and research shows that too much time off from the school routine can actually undo the hard work teachers put in to their students. In fact, many teachers report that the first two to three months of each school year are spent teaching remedial skills from the previous grade – wasting even more of the time that should go into original learning.

What do you say teachers? Are your misgivings about year-round school based on personal reasons, or out of concern for your students?

photo credit: Old Shoe Woman via photopin cc

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Year-Round Schooling: Should We Add on Extra Time, Too?

In this series, I’ve advocated for K-12 schools to shift from the traditional summers-off school calendar to  year-round schooling. Consistency, less time spent relearning material, and the implications that year-round schooling has for closing the achievement gap are just a few of my reasons for feeling so strongly that this shift take place. There’s another piece to this argument though, and one that deserves a closer look. Along with more evenly splitting up time off, should schools be adding more time to their school days or more total days in the classroom?

Where We Stand

Let’s look at where American schools rank right now when it comes to days in school versus time off. Thirty states require schools to have a 180-day calendar, two ask for more than 181 school days and the rest ask for between 171 and 179 days on the official school calendar each year. Minnesota is the only state in the nation that has no minimum requirement for number of days students are in the classroom (though the state averages 175 school days). This means that in states with the lowest day requirements, students are out of school for more days than they are in it (as many as 194 days per year), a number that contrasts greatly with other developed nations.
Korea has the highest required number of school days, at 225, followed by Japan at 223 and China at 221. Canadian requirements are close to the U.S., at 188 days, and England is at 190 days. When all developed nations are considered, the international average for days in school is 193 – a full two weeks+ higher than most of the U.S.
But are all these days considered equal?

How long are the school days in places like Korea, China and England? It varies, but it is not uncommon for Korean high school students to spend 16 hours each school day in classrooms. That is more than twice the amount of time that American students spend at school, and perhaps a bit too extreme. Korean students consistently rank at the top of developed nations when it comes to subjects like math and science, though, vastly outpacing U.S. student. By contrast, in England school-aged children spend 6.5 to 7 hours at school – the equivalent of American students (but they spend more days in the classroom).

A Call for More Time in Classrooms

When comparing the amount of time dedicated to educational settings in the U.S. and competing economies, it becomes glaringly obvious that our standards of what is acceptable in terms of days in school varies greatly from the rest of the world. Even President Obama has been vocal about the need for American schools to add more time in the classroom – either through longer school days or more days on the school calendar.

“Today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st century economy,” said President Obama in 2009.

Predictably those comments have received some pushback in the years since, both from parents who believe their children are already under too much pressure at school and need every single day off they are allotted, and from teachers unions who want to know how educators will be properly accommodated for the extra time spent in classroom instruction. The idea of adding more time to student school calendars is an unpopular one – but I’m not sure that is reason enough to rule it out.
Is it time to turn the U.S. K-12 school calendar completely on its head by abolishing summers-off schedules and adding time in the classroom? Would such actions make a significant positive impact on student performance, particularly in STEM topics?

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Year-Round Schooling: How it Affects the Economy

In this series I have been writing about different facets of the year-round schooling debate. First I looked at the effects on students and then moved to the impact on teachers. As I researched both groups, I found no distinct disadvantages to either (and some advantages) when placed on a year-round academic calendar.

Today I want to move away from the individual groups impacted and take a closer look at the overall economic effect of year-round schooling. Does this academic setup help or hurt taxpayers’ pockets?

On-campus costs and savings

Year-round school programs are based on one of two different concepts: single-track, which releases all students for breaks throughout the year together, and multi-track, which staggers student breaks and effectively keeps the school building occupied year round. Obviously on a multi-track schedule, school maintenance costs rise because the building is in full use year-round. The cost does not increase by as much as a quarter, though, because most traditional schedule school buildings do have some employees there in the summer months and most offer summer school classes for some of that time too. Still, in cold-weather climates, the cost of not having to pay for air conditioning alone can be a deal-breaker when the topic of year-round schooling is broached. There is also the added cost of transportation on more days of school, custodial staff and additional administrative staff.

There are some areas where year-round schools can be long-term money saving options, though. If a particular district has more students than traditional schedules can accommodate, the capital cost of new buildings can be avoided with a multi-track schedule that allows more students to use the same building. Beyond the capital cost of a building, money can be saved through a higher amount of students using the same resources, like library books or physical education equipment. Some schools have even listed a decrease in vandalism as a financial plus of year-round occupancy.

Community cost and savings

Each individual community will feel a different economic impact when it comes to year-round schooling. A tourist community with summer attractions, for example, may feel more of a squeeze if its low-cost employee pool of high school students is suddenly in class instead. The same could be said for ski communities though that could benefit from multi-track scheduling of high school students during its busiest seasons. The summer months tend to be when most high school students earn the most money, however, because there is a significant duration of time with no school responsibilities. Without those months of a steady paycheck, students (and parents) stand to lose potential college money. Trying to work and maintain a job alongside classes can have a negative impact on grades according to most research and most employers cannot accommodate students who are only available two or three week spans at a time.

So the potential economic cost of year-round schooling is two-fold: the individual student may suffer financially, and the local businesses may have to pay out more for jobs that are better-suited for high school students who do not have the time off to work them.

Savings to the community are a little less tangible, but can be reflected in some research that says year-round schooling reduces teen crime, thus saving money for the community. At-risk students tend to perform better in year-round setups, making them more successful in their academic career which could feasibly mean a stronger economy down the road if those students avoid dropping out of high school. While the savings associated with year-round school schedules may not show up on something as straightforward as a utility bill, they still exist.

Like the impact on students and teachers, the financial ramifications for year-round schooling do not seem significantly negative. But for cash-strapped districts, any upfront costs can be a deal-breaker.

What other potential costs or savings do you associate with year-round schooling?

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Matthew Lynch published in Matthew Lynch, Policy & Reform

Year-Round Schools: How it Affects Teachers

In my last post, I talked about the ways that students are impacted when they are on a year-round school schedule, instead of having traditional summers off. Today, I want to look at another group impacted by a break from the typical summer-break school calendar: teachers. Does a lack of a season of rejuvenation for educators lead to burnout in the classrooms – and how is pay impacted? Let’s take a look at these, and other implications, of year-round academic calendars and teachers. In this article, we will discuss how year-round schools affect teachers.

No Summers Off

Every job comes with its share of headaches and at one point or another, employees in all industries claim that they are “burned out.” Teaching is unique when it comes to burn out, though, because an unmotivated, exhausted teacher has a direct effect on the young people in his or her classroom. Summers off has long been the light at the end of the tunnel for teachers, particularly in urban areas with higher discipline problems and overcrowded classrooms. In a year-round setting, lengthy breaks are gone, replaced with shorter, more frequent ones instead. Though the loss of those summer months may at first seem like a drawback, many teachers end up liking greater frequency in time off. With shorter, more concentrated spurts of instruction, teachers can exert more energy and face the daily struggles with the hope that there will be relief soon. There is still as much time off, but it is more evenly distributed.

More Red Tape

Teachers who work at multi-track year-round schools, or schools that rotate student schedules so time off is staggered and the school is always open, have more work to do. Part of the financial allure of a multi-track schedule is that a school is always at full capacity which means that teachers share classrooms. “Roving” teachers have to live from carts or temporary storage in some cases in order to make their classrooms accommodating to other teachers. There are also cases where a teacher may not get the allotted time off because he or she is changing a grade level or subject and there is no time off between tracks.

Single-track setups feasibly have less of the issues of multi-track schools but there are still some conflicts, particularly if the teachers are parents too. If their children go to a traditional schedule school, their breaks may not line up and could lead to childcare issues.

Paychecks

In most scenarios, teachers make the same amount of money in their districts whether they work at a year-round or traditional school, though the pay schedules may differ. Teachers who made extra money teaching summer school still have that option in year-round districts that offer remedial courses during break periods. Where some teachers see the biggest economic cut when they teach year-round is in the three months of summer that other teachers often seek out part-time or seasonal work.

Based on the type of work, this could mean a loss of income in the thousands every year. For teachers satisfied with holding down just one job and paycheck, a year-round schedule may not have any economic impact on their families at all.

Research has not found any large negative effects on teachers who teach on year-round schedules instead of traditional ones. Like any profession, the preferable schedule depends on the individual. For veteran teachers who have been teaching in a traditional setup for years, a switch to year-round schooling may be more jarring than a newly-licensed teacher. Overall, though, the job and time off are comparable – just different.

What pitfalls do you think teachers on year-round schedules face?

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