Year Round School Good Or Bad

Many students give a sigh of relief when the first day of summer vacation finally arrives. But in reality, summer vacation is pushing students backwards by increasing the knowledge gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students and decreases learning productivity. Year round schooling helps push students forward academically, make the school year feel shorter for both students and teachers, and help less privileged students catch up to their more privileged peers.

For example, Year round schooling has shorter breaks and will prevent students from losing a lot of information. Many students go through “the summer slide” and forget much of what they have learned the previous school year. “Research shows students typically score lower on standardized

But most of the time, that is not the case. “Some kids will take the opportunity for construct, healthy activities, but many will not” (“Long Summer Breaks Leaves Kids Behind”). Many kids will use their summer breaks as a chance to relax and catch up on TV shows instead of school work. Summer break is so long that many students do not even know what to do for most of it. Charles Balinger, the executive director of National Association for Year-Round School said, “I had a parent at one meeting say ‘I want my child to lie on his back in the grass watching the clouds in the sky during the day and the moon and stars at night,” Balinger recalled, “I thought, ‘Oh, my. Most kids do that for two, three, maybe four days, then say, ‘What’s next?’” (“Will Longer School Year Help or Hurt US Students?”). It is unusual for kids to get into special academic programs during the summer and more common for kids to just relax and do nothing until August comes around. According to a survey done by Afterschool Alliance, an organization that pushes kids to advance in academics, 24 million kids would like to participate in summer learning programs, but are unable to because they are from a low income household(“Millions of kids miss out on summer learning”)

“Additionally, low-income students can expect to lose two months of grade level reading achievement, while their middle class peers will stay where they were or make modest gains. Over the years, this discrepancy grows wider, and the lengthy summer vacation becomes another way to enforce class differences” (Long Summer Break Leaves Kids Behind”). Many students from advantaged families do go to summer programs or summer camps to help them get ahead, but students from regular families don’t have the same opportunities during summer. That causes those students to stay inside and do not do anything to stimulate their brain, causing the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students to grow exponentially. Traditional calendars have 70 full school days without any break. This causes students to lose motivation in learning as the three month long break gets closer. “Both the experiences of practitioner and research results show more consistent learning throughout the year, increased motivation for both teachers and students, improved safety due to a reduction of disciplinary incidents and tensions, and more learning time for all students due to reduced review time” (“ Back to School… in