Primary Education
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Aug. 14, 2007 — Students in “year-round” schools don't learn more than their peers in traditional nine-month schools, new research has found. A sociologist at Ohio State University found that, over a full year, math and reading test scores improved about the same amount for children in year-round schools as they did for students whose schools followed a traditional nine-month calendar. “We found that students in year-round schools learn more during the summer, when others are on vacation, but they seem to learn less than other children during the rest of the year,” said Paul von Hippel, author of the study and research statistician in sociology at Ohio State. The problem with year-round schools may be that they don't actually add more school days to the 180 typically required, von Hippel said. Instead of a three-month summer vacation, year-round schools typically have several breaks of three to four weeks spread throughout the year.
Year-round Schools Don't Boost Learning, Study Finds
While other children around the country readied for beach vacations or the last weeks of summer camp, Bethany, 11, and Garvin, 9, were preparing for the first day of the new school year at Griffith Elementary, just six weeks after the start of their summer vacation. Griffith, one of five schools in the Balsz Elementary School District here, is one of a handful of public schools across the country that has lengthened the school year in an effort to increase learning time. A typical public school calendar is 180 days, but the Balsz district, where 90 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch, is in session for 200 days, adding about a month to the academic year. According to the National Center on Time and Learning , a nonprofit research group in Boston, about 170 schools — more than 140 of them — across the country have extended their calendars in recent years to 190 days or longer.
Some Schools Adopting Longer Years to Improve Learning
NewsHour Extra: Year-Round Schooling - August 8, 2001
Going to school year-round August 8, 2001 While most students in the U.S. are dusting off their book-bags and thinking about a new school year, some students have been sitting in class all summer. They didn't have to go to summer school -- these students attend schools that have moved to a year-round schedule. According to the National Association for Year-Round Education, the trend is growing. Over 3,000 schools had year-round education programs last year. That's less than four percent of all schools, but it's four times the number of students in year-round schools 10 years ago.Two days before Thanksgiving, the Indianapolis School Board will make a decision sure to heat up discussion around the turkey in just about every home with young children. That's when board members will vote on whether to adopt year-round classes. If the board approves the measure, Indianapolis pupils would go to school in cycles of eight to 10 weeks, with three to five weeks off after each, throughout the year.
Year-round school gains ground around U.S. - US news - Life - NBCNews.com
Drop summer vacation, raise test scores? LZ Granderson: U.S. students ranked 17th in science, 25th in math in study of 34 nations Only 8 of the 34 countries have a lower high school graduation rate than U.S., he writes
We need year-round school to compete globally
Is Anti-Intellectualism As American As Apple Pie? - Paul Nevins
cross-posted at politicsofselfishness.com
When education scholar Harold Berlak paid a visit to a Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) charter school in San Francisco he was shocked. Berlak, an education reform skeptic, found a school that reminded him of a “humane, low security prison or something resembling a locked down drug rehab program for adolescents run on reward and punishments...” Berlak reported that the KIPP school resembled the scene out of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter , in which students “...who resisted the rules or were slackers wore a large sign pinned to their clothes labeled 'miscreant.'"
Deformed: Authoritarian undercurrents in education
Corporate Education Reformers Plot Next Steps at Secretive Meeting
February 5, 2012 | Like this article?
Gifted Students Deserve More Opportunities
BARACK OBAMA and Mitt Romney both attended elite private high schools. Both are undeniably smart and well educated and owe much of their success to the strong foundation laid by excellent schools. Every motivated, high-potential young American deserves a similar opportunity. But the majority of very smart kids lack the wherewithal to enroll in rigorous private schools. They depend on public education to prepare them for life. Yet that system is failing to create enough opportunities for hundreds of thousands of these high-potential girls and boys.
Current Work « NCEE
NCEE has returned to its original goal of analyzing the world economic and educational scene to identify the best course for American education policy and present its proposals for change in the education system to the American public. Specifically, it decided to follow up on the work of the first Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce by creating another, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, to examine the workings of the current global economy and their implications for education and training in the United States. That Commission released its report, Tough Choices or Tough Times , that called for a fundamental restructuring of how America educates its people.
Order Report Publisher Council on Foreign Relations Press Release Date March 2012
U.S. Education Reform and National Security
5 Things It Turns Out You Were Right to Hate About School
For many of you, school was 12 or more years of teachers and administrators deciding what was best for you, dictating exactly how you spent every minute of every day -- the result being that you absolutely hated each and every one of those minutes. But as you reached adulthood, you probably came to the realization that it was all for the best. You were just a stupid kid, after all, and your elders did things a certain way for a reason. That reason being that they were full of shit. Science is just now taking a closer look at these centuries-old school practices, and they're finding out that ... #5.At stake are profound policy questions about how teachers should be granted tenure, promoted or fired, as well as the place standardized tests will have in the lives of elementary and high school students. One of the main sticking points in the negotiations here between the teachers union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a new teacher evaluation system that gives significant and increasing weight to student performance on standardized tests. Personnel decisions would be based on those evaluations. Over the last few years, a majority of states have adopted similar systems, spurred by the desire to qualify for the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education grants.
Chicago Is Focus of National Debate on Schools
It’s not just the school days that are being lost. Far more important, the animosity between the Chicago Teachers Union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his administration will undoubtedly linger long after the strike ends. The battle will end, but the war between education reformers and urban public schoolteachers will go on. Teachers — many of them — will continue to resent efforts to use standardized tests to measure their ability to teach.
How to Fix the Schools
While observing recess outside the Kallahti Comprehensive School on the eastern edge of Helsinki on a chilly day in April 2009, I asked Principal Timo Heikkinen if students go out when it’s very cold. Heikkinen said they do. I then asked Heikkinen if they go out when it’s very, very cold. Heikkinen smiled and said, “If minus 15 [Celsius] and windy, maybe not, but otherwise, yes.