Year Round Education

Ever wonder why some days you feel like you can take on the world, and other days you feel like the world took you? Ever wonder what the difference was between those two days? Sleep and a good healthy breakfast. The importance of sleep and eating a proper breakfast is essential. Not only does it keep you awake, but it improves your over all performance in daily activities. All studies out there show that each teen needs anywhere between 8-10 hours of sleep in each day. Also a good breakfast is important. Breakfast provides children with energy for the day ahead of them. Multiple studies show that the nutrition needed in children to grow, not only physically, but mentally as well, comes from breakfast.

Society cares for the children of the future, the future is what should be worried about. And with the children of today, nothing done now should continue if it causes harm to children. Any practice that benefits the healthy development of a child should be encouraged.

But in order to understand this statement, it is necessary to know what is meant by children’s well being. A child’s well being falls under 3 categories, those three being physical, mental, and intellectual. The physical well-being falls under not getting intentionally hurt, or abused. Not eating a proper breakfast is a good example of not providing physical well-being for a child. The mental well-being is what the think, how they think, how they interact with others. Affecting a child’s emotions could destroy mental well-being. Along with intellectual well-being, this kind of falls under the mental, but intellectual is more focused on the education that a child gets. If a teacher or parent encourages a child to do something that they know is wrong, provides poor intellectual well-being for that child.

Year-round schools show more educational well-being for the students. Multiple studies and sources show that year-round schools are nothing but a benefit to have for students, teachers and parents. Some studies also show the opposite. For the last decade, it has been up for discussion whether or not year-round school should be used or not. According to a study done on year-round education, conducted by Elisabeth A. Palmer and Amy E. Bemis,

It is apparent that the literature shows advantages as well as disadvantages. Some of those advantages being improved achievement, better attendance, not as much discipline, not as much stress, etc. Some disadvantages are burn-out in the administration, problems with scheduling between school and family, and trouble arranging daycare. (Palmer 3)

This paraphrase shows the advantages and disadvantages of year-round education (YRE). The studies have been being conducted since the 80’s and ever since then, studies have not been able to show any outstanding benefits or loses in YRE. Even though the controversy has not been solved yet there are schools out there that have converted to YRE. Actually “According to the National Association for Year-Round Education (NAYRE; 2000), the number of year-round schools operating in the United States has increased from over 400 in the late 1980s to 2,880 during the 1999-2000 school year” (McMillan 2). This quote shows the difference in the number of year-round schools from when the studies started to the year 2000. Year-round schooling should be encouraged.

Year-round schools can cover all two parts of a child’s well-being, academic and mental, To start off, academic well-being. By providing shorter breaks for children during the school year, it gives children more recovery time to learn the material and keep it. The short breaks, in comparison to just one long summer break, makes up for less amount of material lost in children. One of the systems used in year-round schools (YRS) is 45-15. This simply means that the school is in session for 45 days and then has a break for 15 days. There are also 60-20 systems and both of these systems accommodate for the days in a traditional system. In these systems, students as well as teachers showed a decrease in absenteeism and an increase is attitude towards school. This source shows how the attendance and attitude is improved by switching to year-round schooling. “Of the five studies testing for statistical significance, only one reported that students in year-round schools had significantly better attendance than the rest of the district.”(qtd. in Palmer by Elsberry 5). The same study showed the attitude of students and teachers and they, as well as the awareness, was increased due to YRE. “The results indicated that after one year of experiencing a 60-15 calendar, students felt more positively about year-round education…What did become clear in our review is that the more teachers experience year-round education, the more they like it.”(Palmer 6). These quotes from the study show the attitudes and attentiveness in both students and teachers. They are, due to YRE, better than the traditional, nine-month school system. The study provides a lot of different affects of YRS compared to just traditional schools. This evidence presented in this study shows that indeed YRE benefits the physical well-being of not only children but teachers as well.

As for the mental and intellectual well-being of children, this is also important. Different studies along with personal experience as a student show that the learning of material is voluntary. This is true because if a student does not want to learn, then that student will not learn. Simply because the student does not listen in class. This leads to the student not acquiring the knowledge presented in that class period.

The results indicate that 27 of the 33 comparisons indicated significant positive effects of YRE on achievement. Likewise, 11 of 13 comparisons in reading and 9 of 11 in math showed significant positive results. In sum, it is reasonable to conclude that students attending YRS are likely to perform as well as if not better than their peers in traditional nine-month programs, especially at the upper elementary school level(4).

This quote, even without the data table presented in the study, paints a perfect picture of why YRS are such a benefit to the amount of material that is actually taken in from students due to the schedule of YRS. With students actually voluntarily learning as opposed to the fact that they are forced to learn, fills some of the gap for why students are not as efficient in learning when they are forced to learn than if they just simply want to learn. This is very important in the learning process. Students that learn voluntarily have more success in keeping what they learn and using it in daily life. In many cases, the reason that students scored higher on state tests