Who Knew?

I think it may be a condition of employment at The American Prospect to say only bad things about The Hamilton Project, but this business about Summer Opportunity Scholarships sure is interesting. They note that schoolkids' academic skills deteriorate over America's lengthy summer vacations, which makes sense once you think about it. They also note that the impact of this deterioration is especially large on low-SES kids, which I suppose also makes sense once you think about it. So they propose "the creation of Summer Opportunity Scholarships (SOS) to finance summer school or other summer enrichment programs" for poor kids which, once again, makes sense to me.

On another level, of course, it would make sense to revisit our national commitment to very long summer vacations, a policy which as best I can tell is grounded in the belief that kids' labor is needed on the farm during those months. Budget constraints are obviously backing up blind adherence to tradition here, and I really loved my time at Camp Winnebago, but along with being dubious education policy this has to be a huge pain-in-the-ass to single parents and dual-income families, especially those of modest means. Certainly combining the world's shortest vacations for adults with the world's longest vacations for kids doesn't seem reasonable at all. Does crime go up during the summer months? It must, right. Google's not giving me a quick answer to that question.

Comments

Wow, the kids would revolt pretty hard against that.

Still and all, how about the Japanese year with slightly longer breaks in Spring and Winter

Posted by MNPundit | November 27, 2006 7:24 PM

My mom's an elementary school principal (20 years). About 10 years ago she shifted to year-'round school (3 weeks on, two weeks off, or something like that). It was universally proclaimed a success, by parents, kids, and administrators alike. It's a mystery to me why more schools don't do it.

Posted by Realish | November 27, 2006 7:39 PM

If you increase total classroom time, you'd obviously have to spend more on salaries, maintenance, etc. That could be one of the bigger drawbacks.

Even if you just spread the time off more evenly across the year, without increasing total classroom time, you still might have to increase teacher salaries. A lot of teachers use the summer months to work at other jobs, and this would be less feasible if they only got a few weeks off at any given time. So, to keep teachers at the same standard of living, they'd probably have to be paid more.

Posted by david | November 27, 2006 7:52 PM

Fight with Pep and Vim!

Posted by Marshall | November 27, 2006 8:08 PM

My high school had no air-conditioning in it. My understanding is that this is the case throughout the north. That would have to be remedied first.

Posted by JP | November 27, 2006 8:25 PM

Wow, the kids would revolt pretty hard against that.

But they can't vote, can they.

Seriously though, what's wrong with letting kids be kids for a while? Let them enjoy themselves! There will be plenty of time for year-round drugery once they grow up.

Posted by Chad Okere | November 27, 2006 8:43 PM

The answer, Chad, is that while kids are "being kids," (i.e. not in state-supported care for 3 months) someone has to be responsible for them, especially while they are younger. This is not so easy to arrange for two-career families or single parents, which together are strong majority of families.

Posted by Ben V-L | November 27, 2006 9:16 PM

"Budget constraints are obviously backing up blind adherence to tradition here..."

This isn't actually the case, necessarily. Many of the school districts who have gone to year-round schooling have realized significant cost savings, and there are many districts who are looking to (and, I think, have made) the switch in order to save money. Facilities and buses that are constantly in use are actually cheaper on a per day basis; yes, it requires moving teachers to a 12-month contract, which amounts to a one-time growth in education spending a bit larger than normal. Year-round schooling makes all kinds of economic sense from the perspective of school systems.

Posted by jkd | November 27, 2006 9:36 PM

Not only would they have to raise teachers' salaries, but they would have to massively improve working conditions.

For almost all the teachers I know in my age group - late 20s, early 30s - the summer break is a major factor in why they put up with all the public school crap instead of leaving for better jobs. Teaching is one of the few professions that gives you months off to travel, spend time at the beach, playing music, writing, etc. Even if you have to get a part-time job, there's still more time to pursue other interests than a 9-5 office worker.

It's the professions unique perk. Not every teacher would quit if it disappeared, but I suspect it would make a huge difference in recruiting and retaining younger teachers.

Posted by William Davis | November 27, 2006 10:25 PM

I know several places that have moved toward a year round schedule with several 2-3 week vacations throughout the year, and it is a huge problem for working parents. Summers in most urban districts have summer programs for kids. Plus, there are lots of other, private programs set up for summers -- YMCAs, church camps, Girls & Boys clubs, etc. But there's nothing for these weird intermittant 2-3 wk vacations in the middle of the year. Unless the whole world shifts, year round schools leave working families in worse shape. Even worse, I know one district where some of the schools (e.g., elementary) are on the regular school calendar, but the middles schools are year round -- so parents have both problems, and can't schedule any long vacation when kids who attend both are off!

Posted by halle | November 27, 2006 10:30 PM

LONGER school years are associated with higher educational performance. The trade-off, as has been alluded to here, is that kids have less out of school time. And, this is not "lost" time. Kids do not only learn things in school; indeed, most social learning takes place outside the school walls.

YEAR-ROUND or "BALANCED" calanders, by contrast, simply move the same 180 school days around. Despite the claims made by proponents over the last thirty years, kids on a year-round calendar do not learn any more (or any less) than kids on a traditional calendar. There have been scores of studies done on educational performance and school calendars. A small number have found year-round kids doing better, a small number have found the traditional calendar kids doing better, and the vast majority have found no difference in performance at all.

Year-round calendars do, however, usually make it much harder for the single mothers Matt refers to. With a traditional calendar, these moms have to find and arrange care one time a year; with a year-round calendar they get to do it three times.

Posted by dec | November 27, 2006 10:35 PM

I would have certainly killed myself in high school if not for the respite of summer "vacation." Summers are the only opportunity children have to be free of the "total institution" of school (so similar in its structure and architecture to both prisons and mental institutions). Year-round schooling is not about education, it is about making sure that those square pegs who do not fit in the round holes of the school are found and crushed as thoroughly as possible.

Posted by localroger | November 27, 2006 10:52 PM

There's been comments stating that both the survival of teachers and students require them to get 3 months off in summer just to get away from the crap. But isn't that argument just a claim that the 3 months off in summer has allowed the actual class-time environment to get worse than what people would put up with if it was a year-long activity like most of the rest of employment in the world? Shouldn't we be fixing the class-time environment, for both teachers and students, rather than letting it suck and bribing them both with the long summer just to put up with it?

Posted by Will | November 27, 2006 11:34 PM

The battle of Iraq was lost on the playing fields of Camp Winnebago.

Posted by Benny the Bull | November 28, 2006 12:27 AM

The British system traditionally allocates six weeks in summer, two over Easter, two and a half over Christmas and New Year, and three week-long half-term breaks. There's been talk of moving to a more flexible schedule, because many parents book up cheaper holidays outside the six-week peak season (mid-July till the end of August) and thus pull their kids out of class for a week or two. Still, British workers have more paid holiday time, which means parents can be around their kids for longer during the holidays.

In contrast, the French system does les grandes vacances, which may also have its origins in agriculture. From experience, most British kids are bored senseless by late August, with no tradition of summer camp. (Activities are available, but run locally.)

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | November 28, 2006 12:47 AM

I went to excellent private, liberal "progressive" schools, was a good student, and generally enjoyed school. But man, I don't know what kind of shape I'd have been in without summer vacations. I desperately needed a prolonged period that wasn't structured.

Just thinking about having had to attend school year-round makes me queasy even now; it gives me a sense of claustrophobia that I imagine would be similar to what I'd feel if I had to go to jail for ten years or so.

Kids can deal with restriction and pressure when they know they're going to get their lives back and be free of school for a good long time (summer is conceptually forever for younger kids) in the foreseeable future and on a regular basis. But briefer respites, even if they're more frequent, just don't have the same quality psychologically.

Posted by Swift Loris | November 28, 2006 1:05 AM

Those long summer vacations were great! I hated school and those summers were real time off. I would never want to deprive my kids of those long breaks.

Posted by expatjourno | November 28, 2006 3:30 AM

For God's sake let's not use the poor economic condition we're in to further stress our kids and teachers out by going to year-round school. If two parents must both work, then they can either afford proper child care in the summer or they cannot. If they cannot, then the issue is not with the school calendar, it's with the embarassing fact that two people working full-time in this country cannot afford adequate child care for their kids during the summer months.

Posted by OhNoNotAgain | November 28, 2006 7:04 AM

Not going to happen. The lack of air conditioning has already been mentioned. More importantly, the tourism industry depends on low wage teenagers and has already held fits over schools trying to start class before Labor Day. It would fight tooth and nail to keep access to low wage seasonal workers.

Posted by Rob | November 28, 2006 8:20 AM

Here in Raleigh, NC we have a rapidly growing school population. The school board is pushing year round schools as a means to ease the cost of new school construction. The idea is that, with year round schools, there can be 4 different "tracks," each with a different schedule for 3 week long breaks spread throughout the year -- therefore the school can fit in more students by having someone in classes at all times. The year round schools are popular in many neighborhoods, but there has been quite an uproar over a recent plan for mandatory conversions of most of the remaining traditional schedule schools to a year round schedule. Parents (including yours truly) complain not only about the loss of summer camps but also many practical difficulties such as the risk of having siblings on different school schedules (particularly because the middle schools and high schools are not converting just yet, and the high school sports schedules make it unlikely the high schools will ever convert).

In conducting our research to argue about these matters at PTA meetings and the like, we learned that studies have shown no measurable difference in academic performance between year round schools and traditional ones -- so the battle is really over practical issues of cost savings, convenience, and the preferences of voters who get the opportunity to kick out members of the school board and county commissioners on a fairly regular basis.

Posted by Eric Stevens | November 28, 2006 9:13 AM

Crime does, in fact, increase in the summer. That's partially a function of the weather but obviously the idle time is key.

On the other hand, far fewer school shootings!

Posted by Dissento | November 28, 2006 9:20 AM

Matt,
Are you one of those bizarre kids who liked jr. high and high school? Not just some of the time, but most of the time? And enough that you wouldn't have minded sacrificing your summer break?

Year-round school would have driven me insane, and I imagine I'm not alone in that respect. I can definitely envision an uptick in the number of Columbine-like incidents.

Posted by Bragan | November 28, 2006 11:51 AM

the evidence on the "summer fall-back" that matt is talking about is mixed; the preponderance doesn't point to a significant loss of knowledge over the summer months, but some of it does.

some schools use a rotating calendar that varies by grade and even by teacher (e.g. different teachers are off at different times, even within the same grade). it seems to me this would be huge problem if you had kids in the same grade, or kids in different grades, who were on different break schedules.

Posted by looj | November 28, 2006 12:38 PM

Just to let you all know, summer break for 2 kids amounts to $5K in camp fees. The camps wouldn't want to lose that revenue, they would adjust to running 3 week session throughout the year as long as all the schools in the area went to the same schedule. Our local YMCA already runs ad hoc "camps" for the school days off for teacher training days and the one week long spring break. All the camps would just do that.

If teachers not only made a 12 month salary, but got a significant raise as well, such that the $25-50K 10 month salary they make now pretty much doubled when it was changed to a 12 month salary, there would be no problem staffing year round schools. Hell, I'd give up my government lawyer job and take the moderate pay cut to teach if the salary were 80K for mid-career teachers.

And poor kids would reap huge benefits. In fact, although test scores at charter public schools are a little worse on average than at regular public schools when controlling for demographics, it is the charter schools that have longer school days and much longer school years that show significant increases in test scores amongst poor children.

So bring on the longer school year and the longer school day for everyone. Just make sure you give a significant pay raise to those teachers and equip the schools with A/C and playing fields, art, music, and gym classes and plenty of field trips and recess to keep the kids and teachers engaged and learning.

Of course, this will take a significant investment in education throughout the nation. I love the way those private school parents paying $18K/year per child always say money isn't the answer for public schools. Of course money is the answer. My district receives $9K per pupil, half the private school amount where they also have endowments and other funds. Unbelievable!

Posted by ally's gift | November 28, 2006 2:29 PM

Well, just to chime in: I went to an American school outside the U.S., and without summer camps, etc..., lemme tell you, the 3 month summer was BORING as hell. Yes, I tended to like school (I'm in it for life), and I like structure, but maybe a compromise would be in order, considering that more than a month of *completely* idle time is just as bad for some people as full-year schooling would be for others.

Posted by Nick | November 28, 2006 6:36 PM