When I was in North Carolina, a friend told me about an interesting school program based in Raleigh. Her kids are in a year-round school. They go to school for nine weeks and then have three weeks off. There is no summer break.
She said it worked well for her family, because they could take vacations at multiple times during the year. Without that long break in the summer, kids didn't forget skills. Camps arose in the area to cover the multiple three week breaks, so the working parents weren't burdened.
She was a former teacher who had taught in that school system. She said that the teachers liked this system, because they didn't suffer from the March/April burnout.
The long summer break and the multiple winter breaks arose to save fuel and to help schools that couldn't afford air conditioning. (My kids have never been in a school with air conditioning.) If this program were scaled up, it would require a sizable investment in new heating and cooling systems for schools. However, the schools in NC believe that they are saving money, because the schools can manage a larger number of children. School is always in session in these schools. There are three tracks of teachers and students who rotate their 9/3 school year.
I thought that this was a marvelous system. I did a highly scientific survey of a few people in the swim club yesterday, and they liked the idea, too.
I would really like to see more studies of the educational impact on children. Do they learn more? Do they lose the first week every nine weeks, as teachers and students get oriented? Arne Duncan has been pushing this idea.
Apt. 11d 
My cousin’s kids are in the Raleigh system and love it. Personally, I find it difficult to give up my dreams of doing something really big some summer, like hiking through Spain or moving to the country. Those are likely unrealistic and are certainly uninformed, as my daughter won’t start in the school system until Monday.
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My friend’s niece in Iowa attended a year round school. They did 10 weeks on, 2 weeks off with a 4 week summer break and loved it. With regular down time, the students didn’t get sick of constantly being in school and family travel was easier and, more importantly, less expensive. The problem, like anything in public education, is convincing people to try something new. Our school district was under attack two years ago when they decided to break a long standing tradition of starting school after Labor Day. People with summer homes were not happy….
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“the March/April burnout”
This is killing me. About once every 3 years I have to increase my meds in April.
I love the year-round idea, and my dad (former HS teacher) always hated it. Then I became a teacher and I started craving my summer, too. But 3-week breaks might do the trick. My 10-day break between trimesters just isn’t enough, especially since we’ve been taking vacations during my breaks.
You have to give Raleigh a lot of credit. They not only implemented year-round school, but they combined the city/county public schools to reduce class-based segregation. Of course, conservative Republicans are changing that.
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The long summer break and the multiple winter breaks arose to save fuel and to help schools that couldn’t afford air conditioning.
?
Surely harvests ( and then tradition) are more relevant?
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I like summer. Some of my fondness is nostalgia, and some of it is fantasy (i.e. the long vacation). I also have the summer home fantasy (which is actually lived by a number of people I know here). But some of it is real. I like the unscheduled time, and the focus on family. I can’t be sure what would happen in 3 week breaks, but I fear that they would end up being filled with camps and more of the relatively scheduled time that we have during the school year. We do usually schedule real vacations during the summer (which to me means 10+ days somewhere0.
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“Of course, conservative Republicans are changing that.”
I thought neighborhood schools were supposed to be a good thing? And aren’t we all supposed to be reducing our carbon footprints?
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I wouldn’t want to lose summer entirely–there’s too much tradition (some of which, in some parts of the country, is still tied to an actually existing agrarian economy) invested in that pattern of family life to get rid of it entirely. Family reunions, trips to Disneyland, swimming lessons, Scouts and Girls camps, etc. But something like the system Tina describes sounds ideal to me–hold on to a full month or so of summertime (maybe 6 weeks at most), then establish 2 or 3-week breaks throughout the year, in fall, Christmas/New Years, and spring. I could really go for that.
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This isn’t that new of an idea- some of my cousins went to (public) school much like this in Ventura California in the mid 80’s. (I don’t know if it’s still an option there. At the time you could do either this or normal schedule school in the public schools there.) I really don’t know if it’s generally a good idea or not, and while I was usually eager for school to begin again at the end of the summer, I too really enjoyed longer periods of fairly unscheduled time. I get the impression, though, that unscheduled time is less common for middle-class kids today, though, at least in much of the country.
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My friend’s kids are also in the same system. She and her husband work full time. They have no problems finding programs for their kids while they work. They love it.
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Some LAUSD schools do it (Los Angeles public school system). Many (most?) schools there have air conditioning already, because it gets hot in May (then cool in June) and stays hot through September. And of course heating costs aren’t such a big deal.
I remember talking to people about it before D entered kindergarten. My impression was that parents hated the shifted schedules. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s something you have to do whole hog, so the system, with those three week camps you mention, is set up for it. And so kids don’t feel like they’re being left out when other families talk about summer vacations and such.
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I think it sounds great. As a student I always looked forward to school as the summer neared it’s end and hated how much I’d forgotten (especially in language) from the long break.
As a young adult from a middle class youth in New England, I have no idea what this “unstructured summer” some of you mention is. I’ve also never been on a vacation longer than 8 days. And summer is my least favorite season, so I’d really prefer 2-3 weeks off in each season to work with different people’s ideas of vacation weather.
So i don’t really see the negatives…
Also I also thought the the summers off were a holdover from farming days.
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I went to school like this, in South Africa. The summer break (over Christmas time) was typically 4 weeks, the other breaks shorter. It worked fine. My high school had prefab metal classrooms with no AC, which became swelteringly hot in summer and frosted in winter, but we didn’t let it stop us..
Douglas County here in CO has some traditional schools, and some track schools. The tracked ones started because of overcrowded classrooms, as it allows the same physical facility to handle many more kids. Most people in the track really like it.
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I’m basically friendly to the idea, but if a high school student wants to take college summer courses, only getting three weeks off at a time is an impediment.
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In Wake County/Raleigh, where I live, it is not as easy as Year Round, Traditional, Modified.
Some schools are year round, some traditional, some modified. When the board first implemented it there was no choice because growth made everything stretched and we couldn’t afford to build 20 or so schools needed to accommodate the growing population. So, year round was decided and certain schools were changed…everyone was pissed.
Issues arose even more with siblings being on different tracks (year round term on when you start/breaks are). Siblings Going to different schools. Also, High School is all traditional so don’t count that in any stats. it is only an elementary/middle year round program.
My girls will go to traditional calendar year which is what I want. I have friends who love Year Round. I have friends who love modified. We have a new board which is dismantling the entire system. Changing year round schools to traditional because a few parents are pissy. Changing a county tax system based school district to a neighborhood system that would likely segregate the entire county.
Thing is this all started as an issue because of lack of capacity and forcing year round…now people love it and are given more options and we are all crossing fingers our whole school district doesn’t get screwed up.
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US parents would hate this (because school is subsidized babysitting), but I knew a Russian school that dealt with crowding issues by operating in two shifts, a morning shift and an afternoon shift. Like the German school day, the standard Russian school day was a couple hours shorter than in the US, which made scheduling two shifts more feasible. They also had a shortened school day on Saturdays. The Russian teachers would get paid according to hours taught (when the central government deigned to pay them). I taught about 20 class hours a week of high school (which was the standard load), but you could work a lot more than that if you wanted to in the two-shift system. In some ways it was more like being an American adjunct than an American high school teacher, because you didn’t teach the whole day through, and you didn’t necessarily have a classroom of your own.
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A friend of mine attended a US high school which had a morning and afternoon shift. It was the height of the baby boom. So, it’s been done before.
I wouldn’t be wild about the idea, but if I had to choose either academic content or more high schools (on limited public funds), I would opt for shifts. In some school systems, it seems they’ve rebounded from historically small class sizes towards historically large class sizes.
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