Education Week - October 8, 2014 - 6

Popularity Grows Anew
For Year-Round Schools
By Madeline Will
When Stiles Simmons, the superintendent
of a two-school district
outside Lansing, Mich., looked at
the data, he realized summer break
was hurting his mostly-low-income
students, who were losing significant
amounts of knowledge in math and
falling further and further behind.
"What we found was appalling,
and for us to not do anything about
it-not to do anything drastically
different-would have been negligence
on our part," said Mr. Simmons
of the Baldwin district.
His solution: Shift the 578-student
district to a year-round schedule,
with shorter breaks over the course
of the year, rather than the traditional
longer period each summer.
Schools have implemented such
calendars for years-mainly as an
attempt to solve overcrowding. Although
interest in the practice has
ebbed and flowed, year-round schooling
appears to be making another
surge in public education. The number
of public year-round schools increased
by 26 percent, to 3,700 from
2006-07 to 2011-12, according to the
latest data available from the National
Center for Education Statistics.
It's getting helped along by recent
grant programs in Michigan and Virginia
that aim to reduce the amount
of time students, particularly those
from low-income families, spend out
of school during the summer.
Both states recently set aside
money in their budgets (to the tune of
$1 million and $2 million, for Virginia
and Michigan respectively) for grants
to districts that want to implement a
year-round calendar for one or all of
their schools. Other states, like West
Virginia and California, offer information
to their districts regarding
year-round calendars.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk,
R-Ill., introduced legislation this
year that aims to promote a yearround
pilot program, particularly for
low-performing schools and those
serving mostly low-income families.
"I think we're ripe in America to
consider doing something a little
bit different. We've been working
on a model that was established
100 years ago," said David Hornak,
the principal of Horizon Elementary
School in Michigan and an
advocate of year-round schooling.
"It's time for all of us in the United
States to look at how and why
we're educating kids, and look at
alternatives."
Smaller Breaks
Horizon Elementary has had a
year-round calendar for about 20
years. "I'm confident in saying the
calendar contributes to a positive
school environment and success for
all students," Mr. Hornak said.
In a balanced, or year-round, calendar,
students have a much shorter
summer vacation than in traditional
schools. Instead, they have two- to
three-week minibreaks interspersed
throughout the year. Typically, students
still attend school for the same
number of days as in a traditional
calendar.
Year-round calendars account for
4.1 percent of all public schools in
the country, according to the nces
data. In 2012, almost 11 percent of
year-round schools were charters.
Almost half of all year-round
schools have three-quarters or more
of their students eligible for free or
reduced-price lunch, according to a
Congressional Research Service report
released in June.
Meeting Needs
Gordon Grant, the principal of Hall
Fletcher Elementary School in Asheville,
N.C., which started a year-round
calendar this year, said the initial
testing data after the students-80
percent of whom get free or reducedprice
lunch-returned to school in
July was encouraging. For example,
students' reading foundational skills
showed less of a drop after a fourweek
summer than a 10-week one.
Michigan state Rep. Andy Schor,
a Democrat, introduced the initial
bill that led to the grant program
after hearing from superintendents
who said students in at-risk schools
were suffering from summer learning
loss. But converting a school to
have the capacity for a year-round
calendar can be expensive.
Grant winners had to commit to
three years on the year-round calendar.
Five districts received grants
from the state that added up to
$2 million, and two more received
$750,000 each from the Michigan
Economic Development Corp. In the
2013-14 state budget, the program
was open only to districts with high
percentages of students eligible for
free and reduced-price lunch.
But funding for a second year of
grants was scrapped in the 201415
budget. Rep. Schor introduced a
bill last month that would keep the
program open for another year by allocating
$2 million from the state's
strategic fund.
Baldwin was one of the districts
that received a grant. Superintendent
Simmons said he hopes the
year-round calendar will strengthen
student achievement.
But for his high-poverty district, a
year-round calendar has other benefits,
he said, such as uninterrupted
access to free meals and an on-site
health clinic.
"While our kids are out during the
summer for 2½ months, we don't
know what kind of medical treatment
they're getting, if any," he said.
In 2012, the Virginia Joint Legislative
Audit and Review Commission
released a report on the efficacy of
year-round schools. It didn't find
evidence that a year-round calendar
improved test scores for all students,
but did find strong and consistent
gains in scores for black students.
Hispanic, low-income, and limitedEnglish-proficient
students also generally
scored better at year-round
schools, but not to the same extent.
The report's outcomes led to the
6 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 8, 2014 | www.edweek.org
year-round school is scheduling and
child care: What will working parents
do when children are home for
a few weeks in say, October? And
what happens when parents have
children at both year-round and
traditional schools and their breaks
don't align?
Mr. Hornak, the Horizon principal,
said he's found parents can better
budget for periodic child care than
care for three consecutive months:
"It's a little easier on the pocketbook
when it's spread out over time."
And Charles Ballinger, the execuFROM
TOP: Juanita Obataiye
welcomes students to A.P. Hill
Elementary in Petersburg, Va.
Fifth grader Amaria Burdine gets
a pencil from Phyllis Robertson
of Western Carolina University
on the first day of school at Hall
Fletcher Elementary in Asheville,
N.C. Both schools use a
year-round calendar.
state's allocation of money for both
planning grants and startup grants
to help schools implement a yearround
calendar.
'Nothing New'
Halls Fletcher Elementary had
used a year-round calendar in the
1990s, but the change didn't last long
since it didn't mesh with the traditional
calendar, Mr. Grant said.
His advice to administrators planning
to switch to a year-round calendar
now: Take a full year to plan
and prepare, coordinate the calendar
with the rest of the district as much
as possible, and make sure the staff is
fully committed to the idea.
But some parents and educators
are strongly against a year-round
calendar. Many point to the fact that
some schools have tried and dropped
a year-round calendar as proof that it
is just another educational fad.
"Year-round school is nothing
new," said Tina Bruno, the executive
director of the Coalition for a
Traditional School Year, a nonprofit
group of parents and educators
based in San Antonio that lobbies
against early school start dates. "If
year-round school was the miracle
that we were waiting for, we would
have known it 20 years ago."
Research on year-round schooling
has had mixed results: Some studies
found positive, albeit modest, gains
in student achievement, while others
saw no difference.
A 2011 study by Barbara Kay
Ramos of Simpson College in Iowa
found that a year-round calendar
made a statistically significant difference
in improving math scores.
Parent Complaints
Year-round schools can be a costsaver
if used to ease overcrowding,
particularly when schools implement
a multitrack system, meaning
children are placed on separate
tracks, which have staggered vacations
so they are never all in the
school at the same time.
But many schools aren't equipped
with air conditioning to cool them
during the hot summer months,
and renovations-as well as the
additional cooling costs-would be
expensive. Ms. Bruno said it's more
cost-efficient to direct that money to
other academic initiatives, like smallgroup
tutoring.
Also, a year-round calendar is not
conducive to high school students
who want to take college classes or
get a summer job, Ms. Bruno said. It
also can make it difficult for teachers
to further their education, she said.
One of the common hesitations
from parents about switching to a
tive director emeritus of the National
Association for Year-Round Education,
said camps and child-care agencies
will adjust to a year-round school
schedule as more change.
Many year-round schools also
offer optional intersession classes
during breaks, such as remedial
classes for struggling students or
enrichment activities. And they're
ideal for parents needing child
care, particularly during breaks not
shared by schools' with traditional
calendars, Mr. Hornak said.
The Coalition for a Traditional
School Year takes its lead from
parents who, frustrated with their
school's switch to a year-round calendar,
find the coalition online and
ask for help, Ms. Bruno said.
She said she has talked with
parents in Virginia and Michigan
who are upset about the grant programs
to fund implementation of
year-round schools. She added that
they have planned education activities
for their state legislators in the
hope that they will look at alternative
ways the money could be spent.
But on the other end of the spectrum,
the recent surge of interest in
year-round calendars has motivated
Mr. Ballinger and Mr. Hornak to revitalize
the National Association for
Year-Round Education, which is no
longer as active as it once was, so it
becomes a resource available for administrators
considering the switch.
Coverage of more and better learning
time is supported by a grant from the
Ford Foundation at www.fordfoundation.
org. Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.
Library Intern Rachel James and
Librarian Holly Peele contributed
to this article.
Erin Brethauer/The Citizen-Times
Patrick Kane/The Progress-Index/AP
http://www.fordfoundation.org http://www.fordfoundation.org http://www.edweek.org
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