The traditional school calendar, with its 180 days of instruction and three-month summer vacation, is so familiar as to seem almost a law of nature. Yet many schools are abandoning it as an anachronism that serves neither students nor taxpayers well, and adopting year-round calendars instead.
The traditional calendar was designed for economic, not educational, reasons—to allow students to spend their summers helping out on the family farm, says Charles Ballinger, executive director of the National Association for Year-Round Education (NAYRE). "Our world is different today," he points out: our once agrarian society has evolved into a largely urban and suburban one, and many students spend their summers killing time. Yet schools "continue to use a calendar with no educational or economic validity."
"Learning should always be available to kids," asserts Don Glines, cofounder of NAYRE and author of Year-Round Education: History, Philosophy, Future. Schools should operate year-round because they are "helping institutions" that should instill a philosophy of continuous learning, he says. "Would you close hospitals three months a year?"
Schools throughout North America are making the change. According to NAYRE literature, more than 2,200 schools in 37 states and 2 provinces have adopted year-round schedules, and these numbers are growing.
Three Approaches
Year-round education can take several forms. In a "single-track" approach, the summer vacation is simply broken into several shorter vacations (called "intersessions"), which are spaced at intervals throughout the year, perhaps one each season. An example of this approach is the 45-15 single-track plan, which divides the school year into four nine-week (45-day) terms, each followed by a three-week (15-day) intersession.
In a "multi-track" approach, the student population is divided into two or more equal groups; some students attend school while others are on vacation. In a 45-15 multi-track plan, for example, students might be divided into four groups, each with its own 45-15 schedule, but staggered so that one group is on vacation at any given time. This approach allows a school to accommodate more students than it was built to hold at one time.
A third approach—the rarest in practice—is to extend the school year beyond the traditional 180 days. Excluding weekends and major holidays, students could spend as many as 247 days in the classroom.
Advocates of year-round education cite many benefits. First and foremost, they say, year-round schedules provide continuous learning. Students forget too much over long summer vacations, Ballinger says—a fact teachers tacitly acknowledge by devoting a large chunk of time each fall to review. And students learning English as a second language are harmed by spending the summer months speaking only their native language, Glines adds. Students at year-round schools, by contrast, benefit from a more continuous flow of instruction. Moreover, during intersessions, year-round schools can offer enrichment activities and remedial instruction for students who choose to take part.
Among other benefits, multi-track schedules help schools cope with overenrollment. A school with a capacity of 750 students can accommodate 1,000 students, for example, if 250 students are on vacation at any one time. Thus, overcrowded school districts can use multi-tracking to avoid building new schools, thereby saving millions of tax dollars.
Year-round education also reduces teacher (and student) burnout by providing more frequent breaks for relaxation or travel, advocates say. It also makes teaching a full-time profession, allowing teachers to earn more by working as substitutes during their vacations or by teaching intersession offerings.
The main drawback of year-round education, experts say, is the disruption of routine. Families may have to alter child care arrangements and vacation schedules. Teachers may have to rearrange summer pursuits, including graduate studies and second jobs. In multi-track schools, teachers may also have to change classrooms periodically.
Other disadvantages include increased operating costs associated with keeping schools open all year (including salaries and air conditioning costs), more burdensome administration, and inconvenience to families with siblings placed on different schedules. Multi-track schedules may also limit the courses available to students.
A Catalyst for Innovation
Year-round education is not a panacea, says John Bone, principal of Westridge Elementary School in Provo, Utah—one of 90 year-round schools in the state. (Westridge uses a modified 45-15 schedule, with four tracks.) "To get the real bang for the buck," Bone says, a year-round school must change curriculum and instruction as well as the calendar. But he emphasizes that a year-round schedule serves as a "catalyst" for innovation in these areas.
A year-round schedule is also "a much more complex system," Bone says—one that creates "a lot more work for an administrator." Communication with staff members and parents is complicated by the fact that some teachers and students are on vacation at any given time, for example.
Satisfaction with the schedule runs high, however. Since Westridge went year-round in 1983, the morale of teachers has improved markedly, Bone reports. ("I have a waiting list of teachers who'd like to get in," he notes.) According to a recent survey, more than 80 percent of parents want the school to remain year-round, and more than 90 percent of students favor the year-round schedule. Students "much prefer shorter vacations and more of them," Bone says. When on vacation, "they get bored in a week."
Educators at other year-round schools confirm this observation. Meeting the state requirement for student attendance (94 percent) ceased to be a problem at Coleman Elementary School in Baltimore, Md., when the school adopted a 45-15 single-track schedule a year ago, states Principal Addie Johnson. After being on vacation for 15 days, "children told us they were ready to come back" to school, she says.
The year-round schedule puts extra pressure on teachers, Johnson says, because "there isn't any time to review anything." After 45 days, teachers have to move on to the next session. They can spend less time, however, on management issues, such as reviewing with young children how to form a line.
Johnson is especially gratified that students are eager to attend intersession offerings. "The fact that we're getting children to like school" can't be overvalued, she believes. During intersessions, the school offers an array of enrichment activities taught by community members and parents, in topics as diverse as hotel management, starting one's own business, and computer skills. Because intersession offerings are so popular, many students attend school for more than 180 days a year.
Huntington Park (Calif.) High School uses a year-round schedule to serve more than 4,000 students in a building with a 2,600-student capacity, says Principal Tony Garcia. Thirteen high schools in the area operate on similar schedules; if they used traditional schedules, the district would need to build three more high schools, at a cost of roughly $75 million. "The savings are astronomical," he says. Noting that his school has been year-round since 1981, Garcia adds that the approach has a track record of success. "It's past the experiment stage."
St. Mary of the Lake School in Chicago, which serves students from preschool through 8th grade, is in its third year on a year-round schedule, says Principal Ann Chaput. Students attend school for 10 weeks, then take 3 weeks off. This schedule encourages teachers to develop quarterly thematic units, Chaput says. It also promotes setting instructional goals and coming to closure, she has found.
Adopting a year-round schedule seemed a natural move for the school, which ran a summer program anyway. A school calendar geared to agriculture has no relevance to her inner-city students' lives, Chaput says. "These kids don't even have grass or a garden."
Making the Change
When year-round education is first proposed, community reaction to the idea tends to be split. Typically, about 30 percent of parents are supportive, 40 percent are undecided, and the remaining 30 percent are bitterly opposed, Glines says. Some parents "get so emotional, they even go to court to try to get an injunction" against it.
Most parents are skeptical of year-round education at first, says Sandy Hawkins, a former president of NAYRE. "I was one of those parents." Although she was "very apprehensive" when her neighborhood school went year-round, Hawkins found that her children worked hard for several weeks, played hard during a brief vacation—and then were ready to return to school. "Having experienced it, I really support it. It's a better education for kids," she says. "It's not the big up-and-down you have with the traditional calendar."
Hawkins and her family found other benefits. By taking vacations during spring and fall, they could enjoy off-season rates and fewer crowds. In addition, "I spent more time with my kids on a more regular basis," she says. "I had a better handle on what was going on in their lives."
For a district that wants to move to a year-round calendar, "the best way to start is on a voluntary basis," Glines says. Implement a year-round schedule at just one or two schools, or at a school-within-a-school, to give parents choice, he advises. Starting slowly generates more public acceptance.
"You pay a price to implement" year-round education, Bone concedes. Five percent of the population is radically opposed to any change, he says. "You can't talk to them." When his school went year-round, "three or four families were ready to tar and feather us." Giving parents choice helped win broad acceptance. Despite the rancor he encountered, Bone has no regrets that his school took the plunge. "I would not want to go back to a nine-month schedule," he states firmly.
