Year round schooling - Research Paper Example

? Year round schooling Year round schooling National Association for Year-Round Education puts the estimate attending yearround schools in the figures from 2.3 million to upwards in the U.S. public schools. Every year when the students are given a vacation for three months starting from June, they look forward to three-months of barbecues and beach vacations. But many parents prefer sending their kids to summer schools or course programs offered by the schools because most of them think it’d do their kid good. NAYRE has reported that now “3,181 public schools” are up and running all year round, compared with “408 schools in 1986-87” (2011). Year-round schooling is both good and bad, bringing with it both positive and negative. In a report published in 1994, “Prisoners of Time,” it was suggested that the schools which had moved on from the traditional schooling to the year round one, “better met the needs of contemporary society” and “resulted in an increased student achievement”. NAYRE was among the groups which pushed for a year round schooling system. Whereas groups like “Summer Matters”, remain convinced that the traditional calendar serves the need of the society best. Students in year round schools do not have the usual three-month like their peers in schools with a three-month summer vacations. But what do they have instead? Better education? Do they have better education? Are they less trouble for the parents? Is there a financial raise on house taxes that are needed to cover the funds for lunches and schools? Cut down on the time that could be spend learning other things like karate, or camping? The report answers these questions with the help of 6 reference news paper articles, which are: “The Case of Summer School.” By Linda Roberts, San Francisco. Jun. 2011. “Chief Proposes Year-Round Classes to Aid Programs.” By V. Dion Haynes, Washington Post. 04 Sept. 2006. “Parents circulating Petitions Against Year-Round Schooling.” By Lan Nguyen, Baltimore Sun. 12 Feb 1995. “We need Year-Round School to compete Globally.” By LZ Granderson, CNN. 10 May.2011 “The Case of Year-Round School.” By Bridge Schutle, Washington Post 7th June 2009. “Administrative Problems Related to the 11 or 12-month School Year.” By Childress R. Jack and Philippi A. Harlan, University Of North Carolina. Mar 1964. JSTOR. 14th July 2011. “Year-round School gains ground around U.S.” by Alex Johnson, MSNBC news. 27th Oct 2010. A number of districts allow parents to choose to send their kids to schools with year round schedules. Some have strict policies for the students to come to schools. All the parents are charged for the increased house taxes. So they might as well just go ahead and send their kids to school in the summers. But are these summers beneficial? If the kids stay at home what would they do instead? Indulge in fights. Do drugs. Watch wasteful undulating TV programs. It is true that a lot of students go to summer camps, or karate classes, or swimming lessons. But not all parents can afford to send their children to such places and so the children indulge in Huckle Berryfinn like activities. Summer vacations were first introduced when the kids were needed in the farms to help their parents cut the wheat and go fishing. But now a day’s most of the population lives in the big cities. Where there is nothing to do in the farms. So instead they waste their time. And to top it off, when they do get back to school after the three month vacation, they are so brain washed that the teachers have to spend an extra four to six weeks in revising what they did before summers and then bring the class on track. By that time most of the students are tired again and want another vacation. Many of the American students lack in most of the subjects these days. Granderson brings down American education by calling the kids “dumb” and unable to compete against the world’s smartest. The statistics that he presents state that most of the American children from grades 6 and above are incapable of competing in the market along with children from third world countries or communist countries, whose children are a lot better at math and sciences. He says “American 15-year-olds ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math in a study of students in 34 nations and nonnational regions.” And the worst part is that the students never realize what they are losing. There is a high rate of high school and university drop outs. Students don’t want to learn another language. They do not realize that, the world is getting smaller and smarter. They just wallow in the influence that they have set up in their minds about themselves that they are the best as their forefathers were the top of the world. but they are not their forefathers. And they lack terribly. Most students are not interested or have higher aims which lie outside the academic boundaries. These “most students” involves around 90 percent of them. They are lacking in most of the universal exams taken around the world. a very small part of them get as far as graduate studies. They remain happy with learning just enough of math to help start a business or work at a store. This puts the demand for a year round school more out there. Most of the schools which have a year round program use these months as an extension of the ongoing schedule. But others use them as a source of providing children with fun activities to do like swimming lessons, or book reading sessions, or music classes, or first aid classes. These can be very beneficial for parents who cannot afford to send their kids to places which teach these subjects with a large demand for fees. True, that such an act of bringing all the schools into the year round schedule schools group puts a lot of stress and disfavor on the universities and schools which charge a huge fee to teach all these lessons. True, most of the kids will be unhappy with the extended classes. True, that most of the parents who plan on wasting their time and their kids time on beaches will be unhappy. True, that most of the teachers would hate coming to schools for the three months too. But these are trivial problems that can be solved so that a larger problems is solves successfully. And it is one which goes in the favor of every one, most of all the country will progress by having more brilliant and advanced minds on the table to offer the world. Instead of the traditional three month vacation, the schools can be given off at different smaller intervals of a week or two to make up for the time. This way the students would not lose touch with the studies and will also relax, or go on vacations. These same will be for the teachers. And surely this will raise the house taxes a bit, but this rise would be very small compared to the fees that parents have to pay for the special summer classes. Younger students can be taught different and fun courses like the CPR lessons or Harry Potter novels reading, whereas, the older kids can be taught more competitive and advanced math and sciences. They can also be taught more varied subjects like agriculture, or photography so that they might get to know where their interests lie. Another way to make everyone happy is to have multi-track year-round schools. In this method the schools are divided into different groups with smaller number of students and teachers. The rest of the students and teachers are on vacation for that specific time. This has been seen to alleviate overcrowding in schools. NAYRE says that implementing four-groups at the same time “increases the capacity of a school by 33 %”. (Shields & Oberg, 2000; Bradford, 1995; Brekke, 1992). A lot of the research that has been carried out on the literature of students attending year Reviews of the existing literature on this subject generally contend that the achievement of children in year-round schools round schools and those in traditional settings shows that in some places it is remarkably better, but in most others, the students show no difference at all (Palmer & Bemis, 1999; Kneese, 1996). On the other hand, some studies show that there is no connection between the two cases at all (Cooper, et al., 2003). There may not be a lot of evidence that a year round school is more beneficial than a traditional one, but nonetheless, the teachers, students and the parents definitely show a positive attitude and happy result about the new system. This schooling was also stressed by President Obama, who says the children of the 21st century need to put more time doing math than watching TV. In 2002, around 18 states of America had already made policies “regarding year-round schools” (Potts, Blank & Williams). Around the same time a 441 % increase in students going to summer schools was reported by NAYRE. References Education week; Year-Round Schooling (Aug 3, 2004); http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/year-round-schooling/ Cooper, H., Nye, B., Charlton, K., Lindsay, J., and Greathouse, S., "The Effects of Summer Vacation on Achievement Test Scores: A Narrative and Meta-Analytic Review," Review of Educational Research, 66 (3), pp. 227-68, 1996 Brekke, N.R., "Year-Round Schools: An Efficient and Effective Use of Resources," School Business Affairs, pp. 26-37, May 1992 Kneese, C.C., "Review of Research on Student Learning in Year-Round Education," Journal of Research and Development in Education, 29 (2), pp. 61-72, 1996. Kneese, C.C., "The Impact of Year-Round Education on Student Learning: A Study of Six Elementary Schools," ERS Spectrum, Winter 2000 Read More