The year-round education plan is becoming very popular in schools today. The schedule is reconstructed so summer vacation is eliminated, and shorter, more frequent breaks are inserted instead. The typical single-track calendar operates on a forty-five to fifteen day plan, where forty-five days are spent in the classroom, followed by a fifteen day break. All school districts should replace their traditional school calendar with this new plan because year-round schooling increases the students’ maintenance of knowledge, improves his or her behavior, and offers flexibility while being effective. One major benefit of year-round schooling is the students’ retention rates are increased.
Is there really solid evidence to show that moving from a traditional calendar to a year-round calendar increases student achievement? Vanessa St. Gerard writes about the many benefits year-round schools purportedly have to offer in her article, Year-Round Schools Look Better All the Time.” St. Gerard references increased efficiency in year-round schools: “the end result which is achieved by making this change is usually a better use of time and resources for all of the stakeholders who are involved here” (St. Gerard, 2007, p. 56). Teachers and students are able to make better use of their time and resources in year-round schools because they don’t have to fight “summer learning loss” (St. Gerard, 2007, p. 57). St. Gerard notes a 1996 study by Harris M. Cooper in which all of the observed students lost skills in math and spelling and many also lost reading skills during their traditional summer vacations. The alternative, year-round schedule promoted by supporters such as the National
The group does have purpose as they plan to create an after-school program which will improve school performance both by the students and the teachers. The group is structured as the Woodson Foundation and the school system will develop a new agency that will draw on resources from both organizations as well as a representative from the NCPIE. This is where the group comes up short from the storming stage as there is no leadership yet. They are still establishing ground rules such as: Will the new jobs be unionized? And Will the Woodson Foundation be able to use hard data?
From my personal perspective is that schools should never do anything to hurt student performance. So when the statistics show that the 4 day school week does not have any adverse effects on student learning, but actually produced net gains, I wanted to know how. As we all know learning comes down to the quality of teachers a student has. We can all agree that better teacher attendance will lead to increased student learning, when a teacher is absent and a substitute is put in the classroom, it is usually a wasted day, in regards to student learning. With a 4 day school week, schools have reported up to a 21.8 % increase in teacher attendance.
Although parents would like to keep their kids close to them as much as they could, the best option however, is to always think about what would be best for the child, depending on who they would feel more comfortable around. Most people think that going to public school for a public education would be better, statistics show that home schooling is beneficial in more ways. According to Teen Scene, home schooling grows at a rate that is about 11 percent each year. In 1994, it was said that only 340,000 children were being home schooled. In 2001, that number had grown to about 1.7 million.
It raised awareness of how opportunities would benefit the support staff and, in turn, teachers and schools. The agreement was phased out over three years and would help schools implement contractual changes and reform wider workforce practices. Today, there are a range of additional adults in the classroom with roles as diverse as a classroom assistant to qualified Teaching Assistants. Recent research (General Teaching Council for England, 2010) has shown that the deployment of additional adults in the classroom not only benefits Special Educational Needs (SENs) but also assists the teacher by taking on some of the workload, such as administration duties and providing increased individual attention to certain pupils. There are various roles for additional adults in the classroom including parent helpers, nursery nurses within nursery and reception classes, learning mentors, bilingual assistants, speech therapists, teaching assistants and higher level teaching assistants.
Not only are there added benefits academically, but the children in full-day kindergarten work better independently which builds good study habits for the future. Although Grace Chen provides may positive points she also gives detail about the negative points too. With the cost of full-day kindergarten being so expensive many schools do not offer this to families as an option. The second article describes how spending money in a child’s early years of education is cheaper then helping a child in later years. Nicholas Johnson examines all the pros and cons of full-day kindergartens.
During our last staff meeting before our break, the staff discussed how to bring the discussion of character back into our school and creating a new behavioral policy to encourage positive behaviors. I see this shift in policy as a way of bringing our school back to the mission and vision statements that were adopted by the school district. Our vision statement speaks of dedicating ourselves to student success. Our school employs these values on a daily basis, but it is through reflection that we can continue to improve. What are examples of ceremonies and rituals that are common to schools?
Adam Ismond Cheri Brown ENG 0950, Section 116 31 July 2012 The Nontraditional Student’s Success Nontraditional students are more motivated to succeed in getting their education. These students have everything on the line, and for most of them, there are no other options. Some educators believe that students who graduated from high school should get a job for a few years and learn the importance of being self-reliant in order to see what an education can do for them. This was stated by Andrew Braaksma, the author of “Some Lessons from the Assembly Line.” The nontraditional student can have a higher success rate than a traditional student. A nontraditional student generally has more responsibilities than the traditional student.
State 3 positive outcomes of a child attending and doing well in Middle School. How can these positive outcomes benefit the family, in general? Middle school is a big step up from Elementary school. When children become a freshman in middle school, they have to begin to take on more responsibilities. Like in elementary you only have open class and one teacher, but in middle school you have multiple classes and teachers.