Year Round School Pros And Cons
A Look at Year-Round Schooling The battle between year-round schooling and traditional schooling has been going on for decades. While some may say that year-round schooling is beneficial academically, it should not replace traditional schools because it also causes stress on administrators, takes away the traditional summer, may be more expensive than traditional schools, and has no proven effect on test scores. These cons far outweigh the benefits of year-round schooling. Multi-track schools are the champion of year-round schooling. By having students in different groups(tracks) that switch on and off vacations at different times, multi-track schools allow for additional pupils to use the school and for a school building to be used throughout
…show more content…
The proponents of year-round schooling say that “eliminating any sort of long break from school can improve a child’s academic achievement” (Kalil). In simpler terms, getting rid of the two to three month long summer vacation and replacing it with more frequent three week long breaks can improve test scores. Doing this reduces the supposed “summer slide”, or learning loss, that occurs over the summer months. One study, conducted in 1996 by Carolyn Kneese concludes that “year-round education has an overall positive, but very small effect on academic achievement” (qtd. in Wildman et al. …show more content…
It might reduce learning loss and, if using a multi-track system, can save a great amount of money. However, those benefits do not outweigh the cons of this system. The quality of learning is lowered when teachers are stressed and have no time to plan. The traditional summer is whisked away, and along with it goes the money a town receives from tourism and a teenager’s first job as a camp counselor. The choice to switch to a year-round school is not based on academic purposes but rather “out of necessity” says Priscilla Wohlstetter, who directs the education governance program at the University of Southern California (qtd. in Rubin). If a school is overflowing, if the district has no money, the reasonable choice is to switch to a year-round multi-track school. But if a school is fine, if the students are comfortable and doing well, a switch would be a detrimental
The proponents of year-round schooling say that “eliminating any sort of long break from school can improve a child’s academic achievement” (Kalil). In simpler terms, getting rid of the two to three month long summer vacation and replacing it with more frequent three week long breaks can improve test scores. Doing this reduces the supposed “summer slide”, or learning loss, that occurs over the summer months. One study, conducted in 1996 by Carolyn Kneese concludes that “year-round education has an overall positive, but very small effect on academic achievement” (qtd. in Wildman et al. …show more content…
It might reduce learning loss and, if using a multi-track system, can save a great amount of money. However, those benefits do not outweigh the cons of this system. The quality of learning is lowered when teachers are stressed and have no time to plan. The traditional summer is whisked away, and along with it goes the money a town receives from tourism and a teenager’s first job as a camp counselor. The choice to switch to a year-round school is not based on academic purposes but rather “out of necessity” says Priscilla Wohlstetter, who directs the education governance program at the University of Southern California (qtd. in Rubin). If a school is overflowing, if the district has no money, the reasonable choice is to switch to a year-round multi-track school. But if a school is fine, if the students are comfortable and doing well, a switch would be a detrimental