Persuasive Essay: Year-Round Schools

P-12 schools should be year-round

In 1553 John Adams coined the phrase, “Practice makes perfect.” This most commonly refers to the use of repetition in order to keep things fresh in our minds. The term for how well one remembers things, after being taught them, is retention. The better one’s retention is, the faster they will be able to recall information. Retention is the reason why year-round schools perform so well, it's the reason why there should be more year-round schools. It may be surprising, but based on a worldwide study of SAT/ACT scores, the U.S.A. is ranked 14th in education quality and is dead last in math(25th) (Rice). We’ve tried common core, which has continued to baffle parents nationwide. We’ve tried increasing the amount of standardized tests from roughly three to about ten

In order to improve our standing with the rest of the world all P-12 schools should be year-long. We have tried almost everything else and nothing seems to work, so why not try changing our schedule for schooling? The simple fact is that, when it comes to constant reinforcement, year-round schools have it down. All P-12 schools should operate on a year-round schedule because of the increase in retention of material, an increase in academic achievement, and improvements in faculty pay.

The most well-known benefit of year-round schools is the high amount of retention that their students’ posses. This would make sense because instruction at a year-round school is constant. In traditional schools, after students return from summer break, it takes approximately 10 to 15 days for teachers to bring their students back up to speed (Klien). In year-round schools, teachers rarely have to use any school hours to reteach material (Klien). This means, with traditional schools there is time wasted at the beginning of the year relearning the prior year’s material. The subjects that take the biggest hit from low retention are foreign