Year Round Schooling Essay

Duggan 1

Ms Mcginn
9 Oct. 2011

Why School Should NOT be Year-Round Year-round schooling is a new method of education. It has been developed to help students achieve higher grades, and have a better learning experience. The basis around this is to eliminate the alleged “summer learning loss.” The hope is that students will retain more information without having such a long break. The number of school days would stay the same, yet there would be more frequent, shorter breaks throughout the year. Although the predicted results of YRE (year round education) are highly probable and justifiable, the regular schooling system is the better option. The year-round system is likely to create more problems than benefits for the students, parents and educators. Consequences of the new system include lack freedom for families to use the summer holiday to their personal preferences, excessive expenses for the government, school boards and parents, and a greater chance for students to fall behind. All these consequences would just create more stress on everyone involved. Surveys have stated that the majority of the population like the school year the way it is traditionally.(insert site about survey) Why should we change a system that has been in place and running smoothly for a long time, for a new system with the potential to cause greater problems in the future and that may or may not help students? Moreover, the year-round schooling schedule presents problems in both student development and family life. Often, the summer break is used for families to travel or spend time together, for students to attend summer camps, and to take advantage of the season. The YRE system puts limits on these abilities. Though the same amount of holiday time exists, the shorter break puts limits on where, and for how long a family wishes to travel or a student may not get the opportunity to explore new things not available in school. It takes away the experience of long term summer camp for children. “Academic summer programs such as CTY (what is cty?) demand a large block of time in order to teach their targeted content. While there are may be an equal amount of vacation year round with year round schooling, they would be in blocks too small to allow for many types of summer programs” (debatepidia.com). Summer camp gives students the opportunity to be independent and learn new things they wouldn’t necessarily learn in school. It is important for children to learn how to be away from their parents for a long period of time to help them grow as individuals. The reality is that one to two weeks just does not suffice for substantial learning in a lot of cases. The opportunity of summer learning camps would be lost all together with the implementation on the year-round education. Parents should be able to use the long summer vacation to their advantage, whether they want to travel around, to visit relatives in other countries with their children, or send their children to summer camps. Mention jobs, camo, traveling, fun, sports, fam time
Explain system Not to mention, the multi-tracking systems can cause children in the same family to be on different schedules, making it virtually impossible for parents to arrange vacations, daycare, and summer activities whatsoever. This is why the YRE system is highly inconvenient to family life and student development. Additionally, year-round school can be more costly to parents, the system and the economy. Parents will find themselves having to pay more for childcare, seeing as they cannot rely on teens in the YRE system to babysit during the summer months. Teens, who typically accept less than minimum wage for babysitting, will be out of the picture, therefore, parents end up having to pay more for professional care.(too many words, narrow down. Don’t repeat about teens) In school, air-conditioning and maintenance costs for the buildings will spike having students in school during the hottest months of the year. “According to the National Climactic Data Centre, its more than 300 times more expensive to cool schools in August than October and March” (Jensen, par 4). Not to mention that many schools are not equipped with air-conditioning in the first place, meaning that expenses would have to go towards installing new, adequate air-conditioning systems in those schools. In addition, outside of the schools, the summer tourism industries would suffer. Industries attracting primarily summer tourists such as campgrounds, boating industries, waterparks etc. would show a decline in revenue. People with cottages, exclusively for summer use would find them going to waste with not as much time to spend there. Overall, the results of year-round schooling will be more expensive, and detrimental to the economy. (the gouv will have to pay teachers more *look into if hey still get paid in the summer.* also, more supplies, food for cafs etc) Recent studies show that YRE does not improve learning. There is little to no evidence supporting the assumption that students learn more in the year-round system than the current system. In fact, with the ongoing schedule, it is easier for students to fall behind, and in turn they are more likely to fail. It is unrealistic to think that when a student has been falling behind for nine weeks, they can be remediated in only one week. “We found that students in year-round schools learn more in the summer when others are on vacation, but they seem to learn less than other children during the rest of the year.”(Von Hippel). Therefore, to think that students will achieve a better education in a year-round system is invalid. Certainly there are benefits to select students, depending on their own social and economic backgrounds but to assume academic enhancement for all students is not reasonable. You should maybe talk about no chance to make up for failed courses i.e. no time for summer school or credit recovery In Conclusion, it is clear that the year-round schooling system is not a sufficient method to help students achieve higher grades, and have a better learning experience. The fact remains that it can create more problems than benefits. Students and parents will find themselves having less free time to do as they please, paying more, and not gaining any significant academic advantages. To think that the summer vacation would be taken away would be very unsettling to most students, teachers, and parents. The year-round system institutes a lack of freedom and excess stress, which no student wants to deal with. In order to increase students learning, the education system needs to focus on the value of time spent in class rather than the time spent in class.