Year Round School

[momto4]

Jul 14, 2009 13:35:37 GMT -5 asmodeus said:

You're assuming this would only help the lowest performing students...I think it would stand to help everyone.

Imagine you have a choice of two schools in a district, one offering the traditional schedule and the other offering YRS. The YRS shows better scores overall, but otherwise is identical in its offerings to students. Which would you choose for your kids? In other words, is your resistance to YRS based purely on the "benefits" of the 3-month vacation or are you just not convinced it makes a difference academically?

I'm unconvinced it would help those kids who work hard and excel in school already, and I'm unconvinced that a school with higher scores has much relation to the scores of my own kids. I am pretty sure that in this scenario, I would choose for my kids to have a longer summer break. 3 months would be great, but our summer is more than a week short of that on both ends!

[wvhsparent]

Jul 14, 2009 12:59:02 GMT -5 momto4 said:

Jul 14, 2009 12:41:08 GMT -5 asmodeus said:

The important issue is whether year-round schooling is something we need to implement to remain academically competitive with other parts of the country and the rest of the world. All the other stuff is relatively unimportant.

I disagree. I think that quality of family life and downtown for kids are important and that many kids are excelling in our current setup already. If something different is needed for some, it shouldn't be forced upon all.

I know we disagree on this mt4. But I also don't think YRS would diminish quality of family life, but just the opposite, I think it would improve it.
In addition I think limiting downtime to 1 month increments is better than lumping it all together for 2 1/2 to 3 months.

I guess I think the benefits outweigh the perceived negatives.

[title1parent]

Obama Seeks to Curtail Summer Vacation

By LIBBY QUAID, AP

WASHINGTON (Sept. 27) -- Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way.

Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.

"Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."

The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.

"Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

Fifth-grader Nakany Camara is of two minds. She likes the four-week summer program at her school, Brookhaven Elementary School in Rockville, Md. Nakany enjoys seeing her friends there and thinks summer school helped boost her grades from two Cs to the honor roll.
But she doesn't want a longer school day. "I would walk straight out the door," she said.

Domonique Toombs felt the same way when she learned she would stay for an extra three hours each day in sixth grade at Boston's Clarence R. Edwards Middle School.
"I was like, `Wow, are you serious?'" she said. "That's three more hours I won't be able to chill with my friends after school."

Her school is part of a 3-year-old state initiative to add 300 hours of school time in nearly two dozen schools. Early results are positive. Even reluctant Domonique, who just started ninth grade, feels differently now. "I've learned a lot," she said.

Does Obama want every kid to do these things? School until dinnertime? Summer school? And what about the idea that kids today are overscheduled and need more time to play?
—
Obama and Duncan say kids in the United States need more school because kids in other nations have more school.

"Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here," Duncan told the AP. "I want to just level the playing field."

While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days, it's not true they all spend more time in school.

Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).
—
Regardless, there is a strong case for adding time to the school day.
Researcher Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution looked at math scores in countries that added math instruction time. Scores rose significantly, especially in countries that added minutes to the day, rather than days to the year.

"Ten minutes sounds trivial to a school day, but don't forget, these math periods in the U.S. average 45 minutes," Loveless said. "Percentage-wise, that's a pretty healthy increase."

In the U.S., there are many examples of gains when time is added to the school day. Charter schools are known for having longer school days or weeks or years. For example, kids in the KIPP network of 82 charter schools across the country go to school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., more than three hours longer than the typical day. They go to school every other Saturday and for three weeks in the summer. KIPP eighth-grade classes exceed their school district averages on state tests.

In Massachusetts' expanded learning time initiative, early results indicate that kids in some schools do better on state tests than do kids at regular public schools. The extra time, which schools can add as hours or days, is for three things: core academics — kids struggling in English, for example, get an extra English class; more time for teachers; and enrichment time for kids.

Regular public schools are adding time, too, though it is optional and not usually part of the regular school day. Their calendar is pretty much set in stone. Most states set the minimum number of school days at 180 days, though a few require 175 to 179 days.

Several schools are going year-round by shortening summer vacation and lengthening other breaks.

Many schools are going beyond the traditional summer school model, in which schools give remedial help to kids who flunked or fell behind.
Summer is a crucial time for kids, especially poorer kids, because poverty is linked to problems that interfere with learning, such as hunger and less involvement by their parents.

That makes poor children almost totally dependent on their learning experience at school, said Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, home of the National Center for Summer Learning.

Disadvantaged kids, on the whole, make no progress in the summer, Alexander said. Some studies suggest they actually fall back. Wealthier kids have parents who read to them, have strong language skills and go to great lengths to give them learning opportunities such as computers, summer camp, vacations, music lessons, or playing on sports teams.
"If your parents are high school dropouts with low literacy levels and reading for pleasure is not hard-wired, it's hard to be a good role model for your children, even if you really want to be," Alexander said.

Extra time is not cheap. The Massachusetts program costs an extra $1,300 per student, or 12 percent to 15 percent more than regular per-student spending, said Jennifer Davis, a founder of the program. It received more than $17.5 million from the state Legislature last year.
The Montgomery County, Md., summer program, which includes Brookhaven, received $1.6 million in federal stimulus dollars to operate this year and next, but it runs for only 20 days.

Aside from improving academic performance, Education Secretary Duncan has a vision of schools as the heart of the community. Duncan, who was Chicago's schools chief, grew up studying alongside poor kids on the city's South Side as part of the tutoring program his mother still runs.

"Those hours from 3 o'clock to 7 o'clock are times of high anxiety for parents," Duncan said. "They want their children safe. Families are working one and two and three jobs now to make ends meet and to keep food on the table."

Associated Press writer Russell Contreras in Boston contributed to this report.

[title1parent]

www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/1799945,Local-schools-Obama-classroom-time_na100109.article

Longer classroom time soon unlikely here

October 1, 2009

By SUSAN FRICK CARLMAN [e-mail]
President Barack Obama's recent call for public school kids to spend more time in the halls of learning had already been accommodated in some areas of the western suburbs, or at least considered, before the president expressed the idea.

Obama suggested that students would benefit from having more hours in the academic day, more days in the school year, and school buildings that are open late in the day and on weekends, to provide a safe alternative to the streets.

"Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Obama say the change is needed to help American kids keep up with their counterparts in other developed countries.

"Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here," Duncan told the Associated Press. "I want to just level the playing field."

In Naperville School District 203 and Indian Prairie School District 204, though, no change appears imminent.

"Our district has not made these changes and we haven't discussed them at this point," Janet Buglio, communication director for District 204, wrote in an e-mail to The Sun.

Mike Jaensch, president of the District 203 board of education and a board member since 2007, said not much discussion has taken place about adjusting the flow of time in the schools.

"There's been some talk about lengthening the elementary school day, just because we happen to have one of the shortest, if not the shortest one, in the area," he said.

It was decided that the logistics of bus scheduling precluded altering the hours in the day. The move also would have cost a great deal for "a very short gain in the school day," Jaensch said.

The question of adding more days to the school year also is moot, at least for the moment. The collective bargaining agreements in place in District 203 dictate 174 instruction days plus three conference days, which are counted toward the state-mandated minimum of 177 days, Jaensch said.

"Because of that, there really hasn't been any deep discussion of a longer school year," he said, though he added that contract negotiations will begin anew soon, and the year could possibly be lengthened in the resulting agreement.

Kids are already spending more time in the classroom in West Aurora School District 129 than they used to.

"Over the past two years, we've lengthened the school day for all of our students," spokesman Mike Chapin said.

After voters approved a 50-cent property tax rate hike two years ago for "improving schools," the District 129 board added one more class period to the learning day in the high schools. The change was put in place a year ago. This year, the elementary schools had their school day lengthened as well.

While a formal assessment has not yet been done, it appears there is benefit in the increased time at the high schools.

"Wherever you are on the spectrum of learning, there's a benefit to it, so that's what we like about it," Chapin said.

Studied by several area school districts facing space and funding woes, year-round school is seen as one way to pare spending and spare bricks and mortar. But some proponents also support the staggered schedule of class time blocks, punctuated by lengthy vacation periods, as a way to ward off the time lost when teachers have to spend the opening weeks of the school year reviewing material taught the year before, and then forgotten over the extended summer break.

Early in 2003, the Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202 school board took a hard look at implementing a year-round calendar, assigning a task force that spent more than a year investigating the option. Confronted by vigorous opposition to the idea from throughout the community, the board ruled it out in April 2004. Around the same time, Glen Ellyn School District 41 also considered year-round school briefly, but found little community support.

Decision makers agree that American kids aren't harmed by spending more of their time in the classroom, however.

"Research shows that the amount of time that students spend receiving instruction in core subjects makes a significant difference in learning," Chapin said.