Year-Round Education1
Diana Converse and Kate Fogarty2
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Year-round schooling is a hot topic among school districts across the United States, although it's not a new idea. The first year-round school in the United States opened in Indiana in 1904. What is now considered the traditional school-year calendar was designed to allow children to help their parents on the farm.
In recent decades, school overcrowding, high drop-out rates and low standardized test scores have brought about a return of year-round school calendars, increasing from 410 public schools in 1985 to 3,059 in 2000 (McGlynn, 2002). Scholars and officials in education point to advantages and disadvantages of year-round education. Advantages include improved achievement test scores, reduced drop-out rates, more high schoolers going on to college, fewer discipline problems, improved teacher and student attendance, reduction in teacher stress, and reduction in class size. Another advantage is that minority youth tend to take advantage of educational opportunities provided through school activities occurring over breaks (Hood & Freeman, 2000).
Disadvantages include findings that multi-tracks do not divide students and teachers equally in terms of ability (Mitchell & Mitchell, 2005). Also, year-round school calendars result in increased administrator and clerical burn-out, scheduling conflicts, siblings placed on different attendance schedules, less teacher enhancement opportunities, and increased costs of operation (McGlynn, 2002).
As the debate continues, proponents honestly state that year-round schools are hard work to institute and that "Calendars don't teach kids. Teachers do" (McGlynn, 2002, p. 38).
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References
Hood, S., & Freeman, D. J. (2000). Contrasting experiences of white students and students of color in a year-round high school. Journal of Negro Education, 69, 349-360.
McGlynn, A. (2002). Districts that school year-round. School Administrator, 59, 34-38.
Mitchell, R. E., & Mitchell, D. E. (2005). Student segregation and achievement tracking in year-round schools. Teachers College Record, 107, 529-562.
Footnotes
This document is FAR2002, one of a series of the Family Youth and Community Sciences Department, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. Broadcast as program 295 in January 2007. Published on EDIS September 2012. In the interest of time and/or clarity, the broadcast version of this script may have been modified. Visit the EDIS website at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu.
Diana Converse, Extension agent III, Hillsborough County, and Kate Fogarty, assistant professor, Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611.
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