In fact, according to a study at the University of Missouri, they found that many students forgot over two and one-half months of whatever their grade-level equivalency is in mathematics. (Wilkenfield) Plus after the summer vacation, many teachers end up spending from four to six weeks of the next school year trying to review what had happened in the previous years, says David Payne, a former principal. Summer vacation is one of the only major times that parents are able to travel or take vacations, however, year-round schooling which allows small breaks throughout the seasons. Also, travel rates during the summer are usually higher than other times of the year. When students return to school after a summer break, there is often a long time period of adjustment.
Students and teachers in other countries may not feel the same but, in the United States, people need longer then just one or two weeks during the summer to relax and relieve all the stress that they might have. When stress builds up, you need to take time to relax for a while, and a week or two during the summer would not be enough time to do that. When students have been off for a couple of weeks it is always hard to go back because you know your going to have to work and this would make some students depressed. So we need the two months during the summer time to relieve the stress that might build up during the summer. In the summer time it is very hot most days and schools without air conditioning would be very hard to learn in and for teachers to teach.
Students might not be comfortable with the idea of YRS at first. Many students' first reaction is the "horrible" thought of "losing" their summer vacations. Really, no one is "losing" the time they get away from school; it is just being spread out over a longer period of time, which is in the students' own best interests. Although it might take some time many students prefer YRS to the standard calendar. "I thought it would be a bit boring, because
You get just as many days off at a year-round school as you would at a traditional school, just at a year-round school, it’s spreaded out through the year rather than all in one big break (The Pros and Cons of Year-Round School). Short breaks gives time for kids to have a better education and avoids kids getting too board over the long break. Yeah, you wouldn’t get to have 3 week vacations, but who does? Some kids say that they get a break right when they need it and it’s refreshing to them and they’re ready to listen (The Pros and Cons of Year-Round School). It would be easier for them to pick up where they left
First of all, many students have after school jobs that they have to maintain. Some families rely on their kids to provide either for themselves or for their families. An extra two hours of school might not allow kids the ability to juggle school and work at the same time. Also if the school day is two hours longer, students that work will not have enough time to maintain a social life or even be able to keep their jobs. Extending the school day may do more harm than good.
Learning is wasted because of knowledge not being retained through the three months of summer. Year-round schooling is a concept proposed by many in the educational world as a solution to this lack of knowledge retention. There is a common misconception that year-round schooling would result in more school, when in fact; it is simply an alternate way of organizing the school calendar. Schools that use the year-round education attend classes for 180 days, the same as those of traditional schools, but with a different layout. Schools on the traditional calendar attend classes that are divided in nine months of school and three months of education.
241). After compromising with the rural population during the late 1800’s lawmakers developed standards for the number of days that were legally required by the state. Eventually this developed into the traditional school year with a three-month summer break (Hermansen, 1971, p. 9-10). Many feel that this agrarian based school calendar is outdated for the society in which we live. It is widely accepted that the long summer break leads to “summer learning loss” and proponents of the YRS think that decreasing the length of the summer will help eliminate this problem.
Then the student decides to drop to a part-time worker, register for less class hours to find more time to work on improving their grades. But what they soon fail to realize, is that now they will have to hold off on graduation a little longer. Also there are other students who just can’t afford the expenses of college, so they may end up dropping out before they even reach the second semester. These are all real examples of what many college students go through, across the
Key Points The article “Mid-Columbia schools try to beat student forgetfulness” by Jacques Von Lunen primarily focuses on how teachers and schools alike are aiming to prevent students’ “learning backslide” that occurs from summer break. Principal Niki Arnold of Eastgate Elementary School in Kennewick commented that students could lose between four and six weeks’ worth of learning during summer vacation (Von Lunen, 2011). Interestingly, studies have shown that students from lower-income families fell behind even more. (Von Lunen, 2011). Due to this significant drop in learning, students are often at different intellectual levels and teachers have to be creative in coming up with solutions to combat this.
Typically these are achieved by a combination of traveling, volunteering, interning, or working. Students get very burnt out from high school, so why not take a break? Sixty percent of students are not mentally prepared to go straight to college after high school (“Data”). Many students can go gain experience in their field of study to increase their further knowledge during a gap year. They could also go and learn a new language or tour a different country.