Education / Teaching thread
It's interesting for sure. I was just reading about this the other day. Apparently advocates prefer the term "balanced calendar schooling" because "year round" makes it sound like they just power right through summer when the total number of days in school is the same, but the breaks are more evenly distributed.
While critics argue that it leads to student and teacher burnout, it seems that research is unclear on that - with some suggesting that it's actually better for burnout because the average break is longer than in a traditional schedule, giving teachers and students more beneficial pauses throughout the year rather than a handful of fairly shorts ones and one long one.
Another aspect is the summer trade-off between learning loss and the opportunity to things like attend summer camps, have significant travel with family or friends, and for older children, work summer jobs. These things benefit their development in ways that schools don't/can't typically provide.
This seemed like a decent summary:
https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/the-pros-and-cons-of-year-round-school-calendars
I am a HUGE advocate for the "year-round" school. we have exactly ONE in my district. My kids went there until 4th grade.
Basically they go to school from Early August until mid June, so they have a 6 week summer. Much less learning loss. They still go to school for the same amount of days, but they have extra breaks built into the school year. We would do Beach trips in October, and we did Disney in February. During the intersessions they offer fun educational "camps."
It's interesting for sure. I was just reading about this the other day. Apparently advocates prefer the term "balanced calendar schooling" because "year round" makes it sound like they just power right through summer when the total number of days in school is the same, but the breaks are more evenly distributed.
While critics argue that it leads to student and teacher burnout, it seems that research is unclear on that - with some suggesting that it's actually better for burnout because the average break is longer than in a traditional schedule, giving teachers and students more beneficial pauses throughout the year rather than a handful of fairly shorts ones and one long one.
Another aspect is the summer trade-off between learning loss and the opportunity to things like attend summer camps, have significant travel with family or friends, and for older children, work summer jobs. These things benefit their development in ways that schools don't/can't typically provide.
This seemed like a decent summary:
https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/the-pros-and-cons-of-year-round-school-calendars