Counterpoints to Widespread Misinformation on YRS
YRS benefit claims can't be substantiated
For the 30 years between 1970 and 2000, unsubstantiated claims of
year-round schooling benefits spread largely unchallenged throughout
the nation's media, education journals and government reports. The
unchecked statements helped perpetuate the perception that experiments
with the year-round calendar were a great success story and that
year-round school was the wave of the future.
Here we offer information to counter some of the
most frequently repeated misrepresentations and misinformation about the
benefits of year-round school. Many of the "Myth"
statements used here are the actual words or excerpts from
statements made repeatedly by year-round school proponents over the
last three decades.
Watch for future additions of reference sources from media accounts
and research studies that refute myths perpetuated by YRS proponents.
Last
updated June 7, 2001.
NOTE: An abridged
version of School Calendar Myth and Reality is available in pamphlet form. It is a perfect handout for school board and information
meetings. For information on how you can get them quickly, contact Billee
Bussard, editor of SummerMatters!!
Toll-free No. (877)
659-1671; E-mail: bussardre@aol.com
Myth
No. 1:
Year-Round
School is a timely idea.
Reality:
Year-round
education is not an idea for the new millennium, but a failed school
reform from the early 1900s — the Horse and
Buggy Days.
The current year-round school movement is
inspired by calendar reforms in the early part of this century in Bluffton
and Gary, Indiana. The concept met with parent objections and controversy
back then as it does today.
-Source:.
Hermansen & Gove; Glines
Myth
No 2 :
The current school year is an obsolete “agrarian” calendar.
Reality: Agrarian calendar is a misnomer. The traditional school calendar with a long summer break is a compromise arrived at by rural farming areas and city centers as they incorporated into large school districts after government funding made access to high school more readily available. The actual traditional school calendar of 170 to 180 days didn’t become practice until World War II. -Source: Shepard and Baker, 1977
The Cotton Pickin' Truth About the Agrarian Calendar Myth surfaced during the height of a heated year-round school debate in March 2001 in Murfreesboro, Tenn., when Nell Blakenship, a past president of the Rutherford County Historical Society, shared her research on the issue. Starting the school year in late July and early August more resembled the agrarian schedule of the Depression era, when schools let out three to six weeks in the summer so children could pick cotton, the historian said, adding:
"We've just gradually worked back to July. Each year we go a little bit further back to the calendar of the 1930s."
Myth
No. 3:
The traditional school calendar gives children excessive free time.
Reality:
Modern
society has provided many educational and recreational options that keep
most of
today's children busy and engaged during the 40
weeks of the traditional school year. Today’s children spend weekends
involved in
such things as sports teams, arts programs, jobs, computer learning,
helping with household chores and baby sitting in families where there are
two working parents, as well as special school projects and hefty doses of
homework.
Many psychologists are expressing concern about the mental
health consequences of shrinking hours of downtime for children to
be children. The long summer break offers the time needed for other kinds
of learning that is important to growth and development.
If you do the math on proposals to extend the
school year by 30 days, which is being pushed in many states, it will
leave children and families only 27 days out of the entire year that are
unencumbered by school pressures, homework and activities.
Myth
No. 4:
Year-round school reduces “summer learning loss.”
Reality:
“Credible
research shows the percentage of children returning in the fall knowing
less is small. For most, however, the loss is pretty close to zero. . . .
"The difference in the
amount of forgetting after four weeks or 12 is not significant,
especially when it is recognized that some of the information had been
taught almost a year earlier in the previous fall. In fact, one
could argue that a year-round calendar, with its multiple three-week
breaks, simply offers more opportunity to forget.”
--Chris Newland, professor of psychology, Auburn University,
review of the research presented to Auburn school board, 1998.
Myth
No. 5:
A
year-round calendar
reduces the four to six weeks of review time teachers typically
spend in the fall.
Reality:
Studies
show real learning loss occurs within two weeks of leaving school,
therefore a year-round schedule which creates more frequent breaks
requires more review time and less time on task.
A traditional calendar creates more learning because learning is a
building process.
“An
effective education is not a collection
of quickly forgotten, isolated facts, but rather the accumulation
of a a solid foundation of knowledge and a diverse array of analytical and
procedural skills that are not forgotten in a few short weeks. The
difference in the amount of forgetting after four weeks or 12 is not
significant, especially when it is recognized that some of the information
had been taught almost a year earlier. In the previous fall. In fact, one
could argue that the year-round calendar, with its multiple three-week
breaks, simply offers more opportunities to forget.”
—Chris Newland, Auburn University, 1998.
Myth
No. 6:
A year-round calendar is
beneficial to society in general because it fits local circumstances.
Reality:
A
year-round calendar is out of sync with a society that has built its
schedule and family traditions around the school year. Having different
communities around the nation on different school calendars complicates
life in many ways. Among the increased complications: difficulty
scheduling family visits, school competitions, summer camp, athletic
events and college course work required of teacher to maintain
certification.
Myth
No. 7:
Year-round school “intersession” programs work.
Reality:
Intersessions
are too little too late.
"A
three-week period is insufficient time to ameliorate any child's academic
problems. Moreover, intersession classes are usually optional and in many
school systems are not well attended."
--Chris Newland, Auburn
University, 1998.
Children who need help often don’t attend
the year-round school intersessions and go on family vacations.
There is no evidence that sending kids to intersessions six to nine
weeks after they fall behind or to summer is a better remediation approach
than after-school tutoring, peer counseling or Saturday classes, when
problems can be address immediately.
A comprehensive study released in March 2000 by
the North Carolina Department of Education, Division of Accountability
Services, found the year-round calendar with its intersessions, which were
mandatory for at-risk kids in a majority of schools, resulted in no
academic advantage when compared to children on the traditional school
calendar.
Summer school remediation programs in
places where they are mandatory have not worked effectively. They have low
attendance and a high rate of failure, as evident from news stories on
summer school 2000 in New York City and Chicago.
Myth
No. 8: A year-round school offers more school enrichment opportunity.
Reality:
Cash-strapped
school systems that cannot afford to build schools and barely have funds
for textbooks are unlikely to be able to afford enrichment programs.
Myth
No. 9:
Year-round school answers English learning problems of immigrant children.
Reality:
Year-round
schools were used for the same reasons at the turn of the century and were
abandoned in part because they failed to fulfill the English language
improvement promises.
Myth
No. 10:
A year-round calendar is
better because it instills the idea that learning is like the work of
adults, continuous.
Reality:
Learning
is not exclusive to a classroom. It is a natural and continuous human
process that occurs in or out of school.
“Children learn many things out of school. It
is absurd to suggest that children aren’t learning during the summer.
It’s a different type of learning, which simply is not tested.”
---Dr. Leo Wisebender,
Los Angeles Unified School Program and Evaluation Branch , 1994.
Myth
No. 11:
A year-round calendar is more suitable because it allows families
to take vacations all seasons of the year.
Reality:
Few
families can afford
more than one vacation a year and often that is taken close to home
and in the summer.
If it were a more suitable calendar, why is there such a low
participation in year-round calendars used by private schools, which are
attended by children of families who can afford to vacation any time of
the year?
Myth
No. 12:
Record numbers
of schools are adopting alternative school calendars.
Reality:
Record
numbers of school districts are rejecting the idea of a year-round
calendar either after sad experiences or after careful study in which they
reach the conclusion that calendar reform is a bad idea. (See The
Reject List.
In the 1990s alone, at least 1,000 schools
switched back to a traditional school year, many of them among the 15
largest year-round school programs in the nation. Over 500 Los Angeles
schools voted to switched back in 1993, about 200 Florida schools
dropped the year-round calendar and hundreds more abandoned it in Texas.
Myth
No. 13:
Year-round school reduces student absenteeism.
Reality:
Numerous
accounts of absenteeism problems caused by the year-round calendar are
found in media accounts. San Diego, is one of the best examples. In 1993,
the school board issued a three-year moratorium on year-round schools
because so many children failed to show up for the first day of school in
mid summer. Similar stories are told in New Orleans where high absenteeism
of both students and teachers was among the reasons Lockett
Elementary School returned to a traditional
calendar after eight years if YRS.
Myth
No. 14:
Vandalism and juvenile crime decreases under a year-round calendar.
Reality:
This
flies in the face of reports by Gang Services officials in Los Angeles who
say there is corresponding growth in gangs and the emergence of the
year-round school.
That’s because a year-round calendar creates thousands of
latchkey kids, who are left unattended during frequent breaks that allow
for more unsupervised time.
More unsupervised time often corresponds with increases in drug
experimentation, juvenile violence and teenage pregnancy. Many
parents have told school boards that child care is easier to
arrange for a longer summer vacation than multiple short vacations
throughout the year.
Myth
No. 15:
A year-round calendar reduces tensions between students and
demands of school.
Reality:
The
year-round calendar creates more tensions,
especially on a multi-track system when best neighborhood friends
are placed on different tracks and are unable to participate
together in sports and
other extracurricular activities.
Myth
No. 16:
A year-round calendar improves the academic environment.
Reality:
A
year-round schedule often limits elective choices because specialty
teachers cannot be available for all tracks. The overall academic benefit
of a year-round calendar is unsubstantiated in credible research studies.
Myth
No. 17:
Jobs are not affected by the school calendar.
Reality: Travel-related employment is ranked No. 1, 2 or 3 in 11 of 14 states, according to one survey of member states that make up the Southern Growth Policies Board region. So those jobs tied to tourism, camping and amusement industries and products manufactured for summertime activities are impacted by shrinking vacation time for children and families, and subsequently, the economy is impacted. A year-round calendar and early school year also limits opportunities for teenagers to hold summer jobs, which are often critical for college.
Myth
No. 18:
Student vacations are less of an issue then most educators think.
How long must a vacation be to restore someone?
Reality:
Student
vacations are not only about “restoring” children or teachers after
rigorous academic schedules, but about having the freedom, choice
and time to learn or do other things.
Myth
No. 19:
Academic data on existing year-round secondary schools are promising.
Reality: Most of the data cited by year-round proponents over the last 30 years comes from studies that have been discounted by researchers because of flawed methodology. At best, the academic results found in the majority of these older studies are mixed. Serious doubts about performance benefits of school calendar reforms are found in more recent studies by Mitchell at the University of California, Riverside, and by McMillen with the North Carolina Department of Education, Division of Accountability Services.
Myth
No. 20:
Year-round schools will curb social problems.
Reality: Year-round
school experiments that began in the early 1900s were abandoned in part
because they failed to answer social problems back then. Why will they
address the problems of the new millennium any better?
Myth
No. 21:
Year-round schools answer economic needs of the nation and is an efficient
use of taxpayer money.
Reality:
The
calendar is actually more costly and only postpones the inevitable need
for building new schools.
The wear-and-tear and maintenance costs involved in operating a year-round school negate any perceived
savings.
Even under optimal circumstances, the savings are insignificant,
research shows.
"Cost savings are often illusory, as
multi-track YRS only defers but does not eliminate school
construction."
-Robert Rosenfeld, attorney,
Memorandum in Opposition to Year-Round Schools,
Montgomery County, Maryland, Dec. 22, 1993
The
California year-round incentive money program "costs as much as
building new schools . . . Districts are getting paid twice--once to avoid
construction, and once to build traditional calendar schools."
-State Sen. Marian Bergeson,
address to the National Association For Year-Round Education, October 1990
"As
with many education innovations, advocates of year-round schooling have
sometimes oversimplified and exaggerated the financial benefits that will
accrue to districts on year-round schedules . . .In some instances,
savings have been so minimal that year-round schooling has been abandoned
after just a few years of implementation."
-Barbara J. Merino,
"The Impact of year-round Schooling, a Review,"
Urban Education, Oct. 1983
Myth
No. 22:
The traditional calendar has been around 100 years and has outlived
its usefulness.
Reality:
The
traditional calendar as we know it has been around about 50 years. It
continues to work very well for American society, which has built its
traditions and business schedules around it.
If today's school calendar were obsolete, why would industrial competitors, like Japan, be adjusting their calendars to
more resemble that of American schools?
The reason for the change in Japan is:
"a growing concern
that an orderly and unimaginative school system excels at producing
pliant, disciplined workers, which the nation needed for its rebuilding
effort after World War II, but is failing to produce the problem solvers
and innovators needed for the future.”
-New York Times,
February 25, 2001