School Year Round School Research Paper

Words: 590
Pages: 3

While most students, and adults, believe that summer vacation has been a part of the school system calendar since school began, this is not actually the case. During the 19th century, some school calendars went all year, there was no long summer break. It was not until the mid-19th century, when this began to change due to people flocking to the cities. The rich began to go to the country side due to the cities overwhelming heat and classes were left half empty because attendance, at the time, was not mandatory. The summer break was created in order to give kids time off to “rest their brains”, fear of summer epidemics and mostly, to copy the vacation style of the (Pedersen, James M). This reasoning is no longer applicable to our times as students today rely on school for air conditioning, heat, food, water and education. This super school plan will prioritize a dynamic year-round schedule in order for students from different socioeconomic backgrounds to maintain an even playing …show more content…
A common school schedule consists of students attending school 7 hours a day, 180 days out of the year, with a 2 to 3-month summer vacation. During this vacation period, students go down the “summer slide” meaning they forget a portion of the information they were taught during the school year (National Summer Learning Association). The beginning of the new year then requires a big chunk of time to review everything from the previous year. Studies show that “every summer, low-income youth lose two to three months in reading while their higher-income peers make slight gains…by fifth grade, summer learning loss can leave low-income students 2 1/12 to 3 years behind their peers” (National Summer Learning Association). The achievement gap between the different social classes continues to grow and one contributor is the difference in how they may spend their