Growing up in Las Vegas, Nevada I would watch cartoons and the characters were so excited for the end of the school year. This meant that the characters got two months of no school. I thought that it was just cartoons looking for a justifiable reason for the young characters to not be attending school. It seemed absurd. Why would students need that much time off from school? Why over the summer?
Why was I in total disbelief of this idea? Well, my school followed what is called “Year-Round School Calendar.” Before you jump to conclusions, it is still 180 days of school. You’re not losing your breaks. Instead it's spread out throughout the school year. The most popular, and the one that my school followed, is the 45-15 plan, in which children attend school for 45 days then have 3 weeks off.
Imagine growing up and having about 2 weeks off after every school quarter. Instead of waiting all year for Christmas or summer break you have 3 more breaks on top of that. My family and I would take these breaks to travel to California and go to Disneyland. During our visits the majority of the country was still in school so we got a lot out of our trips. Living in Florida my family wouldn’t dare to go to Disney World during the summer.
The term “Traditional School Calendar,” refers to the popular schedule, where students have extended summer break. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, 86 percent of public school in the United States operate on the traditional calendar even though its outdated purpose was so children could help their parents harvest crops, which is no longer a concern.
The most popular argument for year-round school is avoiding the brain drain that students experience during summer break. Several studies reveal that children show losses in math and language arts knowledge over the summer break.
When my family and I made the move to Florida in August of 2002 I was still attending 2nd grade. We moved to make it in time for the start of the new school year in Florida. Going into 3rd grade all the students were coming from a 2 month break and I was fresh out of 2nd grade. It was a surprise to me to find the teacher reviewing everything I literally had just learned. I was naturally ahead of the class.
Coming back to school in Las Vegas we didn’t have to review the previous year because it wasn’t necessary, we were just coming back from a 3 week break. We were just picking up where we left off. After summer break students must reorganize themselves to the school schedule and the first month of school is spent reviewing what the students have forgotten over the summer break.
My sister had a harder time adjusting to the new school year schedule. She was already behind because of her learning disability. Year-round school allows opportunities for struggling students, like my sister to take remediation classes over the repetitive breaks. This allows them to get the help they need to catch-up with other students during the school year, when they need it. Whereas students in traditional calendar would have to wait until summer, when school is already over to get the help they need. That is what happened to my sister, she did not get the help she needed until the summer after school had ended, and because of this my sister ended up having to repeat the grade.
My first summer break off my parents tried to keep us educated by buying textbooks and giving us homework. It didn’t last long and my siblings and I found ourselves bored over the summer. My parents found the free time to be unnecessarily stressful as they tried to figure out what to do with us while working on top of that.
I still hold the same opinion as I do when I was younger, after experiencing the traditional school calendar. There is no reason for children to be away from school for 2 months. The year-round schedule can bring in more consistent breaks, avoid unnecessary reviewing and allows for expanded opportunities for learning.
