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happythoughts

year round school

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>Provide optional enrichment summer school.

OK, so year-round school, just optional.

>Also, if this is offered, students and parents who care about academics
>will have a tendency to accept the offer of free summer school, while the
>families that place less importance on academics are free to do other
>things.

This means that very little changes. All the studies I've seen indicate that the parents who care about academics are going to do something like this anyway (summer camps, reading programs, SAT prep etc.) It is the children of parents who don't get very involved that are the ones who suffer most during summer vacation - and in your proposal, are also the ones who do not get the benefit.

I agree that vacations are great, and should not be ended. But it seems like you'd see a lot less academic backsliding if they were better distributed throughout the year - two weeks during Christmas, two weeks for spring break, two weeks during the summer etc.

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>Also, if this is offered, students and parents who care about academics
>will have a tendency to accept the offer of free summer school, while the
>families that place less importance on academics are free to do other
>things.

This means that very little changes. All the studies I've seen indicate that the parents who care about academics are going to do something like this anyway (summer camps, reading programs, SAT prep etc.) It is the children of parents who don't get very involved that are the ones who suffer most during summer vacation - and in your proposal, are also the ones who do not get the benefit.

I agree that vacations are great, and should not be ended. But it seems like you'd see a lot less academic backsliding if they were better distributed throughout the year - two weeks during Christmas, two weeks for spring break, two weeks during the summer etc.




No, providing optional summer enrichment would offer the opportunity to every student, not just those with enough money to go to camp, SAT Prep, and summer reading programs. When I was working on my MA, I worked with many children whose families would have loved to send them to enrichment summer school, but it cost money they didn't have.

Enrichment summer school would provide all students the opportunity to continue their education during the summers, and whether or not to take the opportunity is their choice.

If a child's family places no value on education, the odds of that child succeeding in school are very low, no matter how much more class time you offer. If a child's family values education, that child will usually do well, because even through the summer, their parents will be reading to them, making sure they stay caught up, and doing other things to further their education.

We simply cannot force someone to value their education. What we can do is present the opportunity for them to learn if they want to.

One of my high school teachers had a bumper sticker on her chalkboard that said "You can lead someone to knowledge, but you can't make them think."

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>If a child's family places no value on education, the odds of that child
>succeeding in school are very low, no matter how much more class time
>you offer.

Perhaps - but that's what the studies I mentioned looked at, and they concluded that more time in school DOES correlate to greater success in school for those students.

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>Provide optional enrichment summer school.

OK, so year-round school, just optional.

>Also, if this is offered, students and parents who care about academics
>will have a tendency to accept the offer of free summer school, while the
>families that place less importance on academics are free to do other
>things.

This means that very little changes. All the studies I've seen indicate that the parents who care about academics are going to do something like this anyway (summer camps, reading programs, SAT prep etc.) It is the children of parents who don't get very involved that are the ones who suffer most during summer vacation - and in your proposal, are also the ones who do not get the benefit.

I agree that vacations are great, and should not be ended. But it seems like you'd see a lot less academic backsliding if they were better distributed throughout the year - two weeks during Christmas, two weeks for spring break, two weeks during the summer etc.



The liberals will never lat this happen if the media gets hold of the story.

I can see the headlines now!

[B]Unfair Schooling Banned[/B]

The school board today decided to disallow children to voluntarily attend any classes during the summer break. It was determined that the competition of the grades in the following normal school session would be overly unbalanced and unequal.

Lizzy, the school board's spokesperson, stated after the decision, "It just makes sense! We shouldn't score our athletics and we shouldn't grade our students! Since we have to grade our students, we should lessen the competition between the students so that no one is feeling dominated." Then, in closing, she boasted, "We will have the largest Valadictorian class ever seen, we may get to be in the Guiness!"

What has this rerporter concerned is the mandatory bussing in of illegal Undocumented students, as we will all be held to be equal with them.

The second point of the agenda was the budget. The school year is now being considered to be too long and will have to be shortened due to budgetary cutbacks, with the excetion of the school boards salary of course.
I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

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>If a child's family places no value on education, the odds of that child
>succeeding in school are very low, no matter how much more class time
>you offer.

Perhaps - but that's what the studies I mentioned looked at, and they concluded that more time in school DOES correlate to greater success in school for those students.



Yes, but making more time in school mandatory because it would improve scores for a certain socioeconomic demographic isn't fair to the kids that would lose outside educational opportunities that are equally valuable if they were required to spend more time in the classroom.

Let the option be there. I'd bet that most kids from low income families take advantage of that, if not from placing a value on education, then from not having to worry about who's watching your kids during summer break while mom and dad are at work.

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Interesting stuff about this in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I'm sure there is even more in primary literature. Children from poorer families do just as well at acquiring skills during the school year but have a huge amount of stasis or backsliding during breaks.
"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

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When I was a kid, my parents would take us on long vacations (a month or so) to places we'd never been. If my brother and I had gone to year round school, chances are we wouldn't have been "off track" at the same time, and as my mother is a teacher, she wouldn't have had time off either, and our vacations would have been impossible.



I grew up under the year round school systemin Europe. None of the objections you have raised were an issue.

I had 6 weeks off in the summer, more than enough to have a 1 month vacation. In Holland school vacations are times by geographic area. It would be unlikely your brother and mother would be in different geographic areas through elementary and secondary school.

The benefits are there, it is abetter wya of schooling children.

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>Yes, but making more time in school mandatory because it would improve
>scores for a certain socioeconomic demographic isn't fair to the kids that
>would lose outside educational opportunities that are equally valuable if
>they were required to spend more time in the classroom.

I think you would _gain_ opportunities if you spaced vacations more equally. A kid who wants to train to be a downhill racer isn't going to have much opportunity under the current summer-only vacations. Giving him the chance to spend two weeks at a skiing camp would help give him more options. (Or choose your own avocation.)

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When I was a kid, my parents would take us on long vacations (a month or so) to places we'd never been. If my brother and I had gone to year round school, chances are we wouldn't have been "off track" at the same time, and as my mother is a teacher, she wouldn't have had time off either, and our vacations would have been impossible.



I grew up under the year round school systemin Europe. None of the objections you have raised were an issue.

I had 6 weeks off in the summer, more than enough to have a 1 month vacation. In Holland school vacations are times by geographic area. It would be unlikely your brother and mother would be in different geographic areas through elementary and secondary school.

The benefits are there, it is abetter wya of schooling children.




The issue here is that schools are using the year round system to have more students at one school.

To use a simple example, students are divided into thirds, track A, B, and C. The school has a capacity of 400 students, and there are 200 students in each track, for a total of 600.

For the first four months of the school year, track A and B have school, track C has a vacation. For the second four months, B and C have school, and A has vacation, and the next four months, C and A have school and B is off.

Of course, A, B, and C aren't divided by months like the simplistic example above. Time off is in increments of several weeks at a time.

So, my brother and I could live in the same school district, my mother could teach in the same school district, but if he was track A, I was track B, and she was track C, we'd never have any time together.

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Ahh ok, that scenario doesn't make sense to me. Turns schools into factories.



As a former teacher, I can tell you that's basically what they are. They're a factory where, no matter the quality of the initial material you're given to work with, you are required to turn out product that, when tested by quality control, produces passing results.

We have a problem here of blaming teachers for students' failure to learn. In my experience, even the worst teacher will present the material (even if their only "presentation" was handing the student their textbook), and a motivated student will work to understand it, and an unmotivated student won't. What makes a great teacher is the ability to motivate students that don't care at all about what they're being taught. And even those great teachers don't reach everyone.

If a student comes in to school having gone to pre-school, with a parent who is excited about education and stresses to the child how important it is to the child's future, who takes the time to read to the child and helps the child with homework and gives the child a quiet place to study, that child will probably be much more likely to succeed than a child who has a single parent who works two jobs and is never home and relies on the child to look after their four younger siblings while the parent is at work, takes the child out of school for various reasons, didn't give the child any academic foundation at all, and provides absolutely no support at home for the education of the child, and doesn't see the importance of education.

Teachers get both of those kinds of students, and some falling in between. However, they are expected to turn out the same positive results for both students, when the second one really has the deck stacked against them.

I don't know why when a kid eats too much sugar and doesn't brush his teeth and gets one dental exam every ten years and has never been taught to care for his teeth, we blame the parent and not the dentist, but when a child is equally unprepared to care for himself intellectually, we blame his failure on the teacher.

I'm not saying it's never the teacher's fault or that teachers are perfect. I am saying that a student who wants to learn and succeed will do so despite an inferior teacher, while a student who has no desire to succeed will most definitely fail with an inferior teacher, and will probably not do so well with a great teacher either, given the home situation.

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The current school year is a function of kids having to help their parents on the farm. Many countries organize their vacations differently, as do many home-schoolers.

The more options there are for kids, the better -- there are so many things that just one system won't do well. And the more expensive for the educational system.

Wendy P.



Agree except for high schoolers. While I still traveled, I also worked for several weeks full-time during my summers, and I really believe having a full-time job during that period of time is important for several reasons. To name a couple:

1. Experience of working for another authority every day, even the beautiful beach days.
2. Inspiration to do well in college because no-one wants to do what they did in high school every day/all day the rest of their lives.*



*Except me. :$ If not for the mere $12/hour seasonal work, I would still be teaching kids to swim. It's the only money-paying work I have ever loved.
"Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be." ~ Temple Grandin

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*Except me. :$ If not for the mere $12/hour seasonal work, I would still be teaching kids to swim. It's the only money-paying work I have ever loved.



Here in California, I have a friend who makes a living as a year round private swim instructor. She gets paid to drive to the houses of people with pools and teach their kids to swim. However, this is Southern California, and swimming year round is pretty common. I'm not sure how much money she makes, but she's got a decent standard of living and a new car, so I'm guessing she's doing okay.

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...The USA has a shorter school year than just about any other developed country, and our achievement scores show it...
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The problem is not the amount of time spent in class, but the content & presentation of the lessons.

My 10th grade "social studies" class was a boring collection of word lists, names & dates, and a bunch of facts presented in a dry manner by a teacher who knew little more about this stuff than we did and obviously didn't have any real passion for helping us understand the material. We got passing grades but didn't learn much.

In contrast, an English class presentation of Shakespeare stuff was taught by a guy who understood and enjoyed the subject & made it very interesting.

My kids' journey through the public school system has been mostly a waste of time. Much emphasis is placed on non-academic matter, including but not limited to environmental evangelism, preaching about recycling, anti-tobacco & anti-gun dogma, etc. Add to this frequent trips to the auditorium for a vacuous succession of assemblies of questionable educational value, multi-cultural bullshit, and an atmosphere that does little to encourage academic excellence.

And let's not forget how they waste the entire month of February immersed in a bunch of worthless discussions about slavery, in a manner designed to create racial animosity rather than impress upon the kids the genious of the Founders, who created a system of government which allowed future generations to take action to do away with this blemish in our history.

The teacher "certification" process weeds out strong thinkers, creating instead an army of glassy-eyed touchy-feely types who respond more to emotion rather than intellect. (Watch what heppens when an experienced businessman offers to teach a business class. The teachers' unions are quick to find reasons not to allow this sort of thing. Never mind that this guy is more qualified to teach the class than most "real" teachers ever will be.)

Last year I made a delivery to a local elementary school, and watched as one teacher gave gushing praise to two girls who had been sent out to bring trash to the dumpster. They had been told to return inside immediately if they saw a "stranger." On their way out they passed the heating & air guy working on the AC unit. They said "He's a stranger," dropped the bag, and ran. These officially certified teachers were teaching these kids to be irrational & paranoid. Such attitudes run rampant through faculty lounges all over the country.

Frankly, the dirty little secret is that the left, which controls the schools, wants year-round schedules so as to minimize the amount of time children spend outside of their control & influence. Wanna improve the schools? Easy. Repeal compulsory attendance laws, and sit back & watch the schools fix themselves as they seek to provide a product customers will want to buy.

Cheers,
Jon S.

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I think the push toward year round school is being driven by the ever increasing evidence that children experience a decline in knowledge over the extended summer break. This is not news. It’s very clear in the research that children are at best stagnating, at worst exhibiting significant decline. The first month or two of the school year is spent re-teaching what was taught in the previous school year. The 180 days that children spend in school could be used more efficiently if those days spanned the entire year with breaks interspersed throughout the year. Same number of schools days, more breaks. I’ll spare you my rant about content since that’s a separate issue. I have many, many issues with the current educational system.

From a developmental perspective, children do not ‘need’ a long summer break. They don’t ‘need’ large periods of completely unstructured time. Summer break is an antiquated system which arose from the need for children to work on the farms. Those children did not spend their summer playing; they spent it working on the farm. If children are stressed about school, it is most likely coming from the parents, not the school. The kids that are stressed are usually the ones whose parents are putting too much pressure on them or are over-scheduling them.

From a parent perspective, I would love to have year round school. I think it would improve the quality of family life, not detract from it. Most people can’t take off work for the whole summer and the fact is the majority of women in this country with school-aged children work. Hence the dizzying array of summer camp options. Even people who have a lot of vacation time usually can’t take it all at once or may not want to use it all at once. What I would like to see is a 4 week break in the summer and some 2 week breaks throughout the year. I would be able to spend more of the break time with my daughter in that type of system than in the current system.

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>Frankly, the dirty little secret is that the left, which controls the schools,
>wants year-round schedules so as to minimize the amount of time
>children spend outside of their control & influence.

That's it! It's the evil left who, in association with Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and CNN, want to CONTROL YOUR CHILDREN! Probably even force them to believe in their twisted ideals of evolution, gravity and physics. Maybe even make them "go gay" with their insidious subliminal messages during assemblies. When, oh when, will conservatives stand up to the evils of education?

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First, my hat's off to all those teachers out there who have not yet let themselves be dragged down by the politics of school administration and by those little monsters they have to deal with.

I'd say Nighingale nailed it, with one omission, when she said:

Quote

Quote

Ahh ok, that scenario doesn't make sense to me. Turns schools into factories.



As a former teacher, I can tell you that's basically what they are. They're a factory where, no matter the quality of the initial material you're given to work with, you are required to turn out product that, when tested by quality control, produces passing results.

We have a problem here of blaming teachers for students' failure to learn. In my experience, even the worst teacher will present the material (even if their only "presentation" was handing the student their textbook), and a motivated student will work to understand it, and an unmotivated student won't. What makes a great teacher is the ability to motivate students that don't care at all about what they're being taught. And even those great teachers don't reach everyone.



The omission relates to the motivation of the teacher.
In my book, a motivated teacher goes further towards providing a quality education than any all-year school ever could. Yes, that comparison is kind of apples/oranges.

What is needed is more motivated teachers. Using the same "worst" teachers will not be advantageous even in the all-year environment.

The problem is how the hell can a teacher keep up the good work and the good attitude given the quality of the students they have to deal with daily.

Who the hell wants to have to deal with that holy terror in class all year?

The "No Child Left Behind" idea could be thrown out the door. It was politically motivated and time has shown us it doesn't work.

What it's doing is holding back those students who want to learn. Teachers, God bless their poor souls, are having to take time to deal with the little brats and that takes away time that could be actually teaching those who want to learn.

Here's a radical idea...put the kids who want to learn in one school and those holy terrors brats in another.
Oh wait...that already being done. It's called Reform School. There's just not enough reform schools being built nowadays.

SCHOOL ADMINS GET OFF YOUR SCARED ASSES AND STAND UP FOR WHAT'S RIGHT!
My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

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>I have such fond memories of summers off as a kid. Great fun, great
>friends, lazy days & days of hard play & days of hard work. Somehow I
>survived, despite the current studies being touted as proof that those
>summers off were secretly damaging my potential, and despite the fact our
>family was of meager means.

Me too. In fact, I even survived four years of single-sex religious high school. But that's not an argument that that's a good way to do things.

We should keep vacations as an integral part of schooling. We should just spread them out a bit more, so kids don't have as much time to regress.

>Maybe the answer is to identify them and provide some structure if needed.

OK. How do we do that?



Boot camp.;)
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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Bill, you're being way too flippant. Have you spent any time paying attention to the things that have been happening in the schools? Of course, you'll only find this stuff in information sources you consider "right wing." The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, etc. do not place much priority on reporting such things, and when they do they approach it from the perspective of the ignorant parents trying to "impose" something when in reality it is the left-wing government school system that is doing the imposing.

We've discussed the origin-of-life issue before. You support a narrow one-sided approach, while I support exposing students to the truth (that is, that there are two basic theories, neither of which can be scientifically proven.) Yet in your twisted logic, you claim objectivity & fairness and accuse me of evil motives.

You want the state to shove your secular-humanist religious theories down my kids' throats, yet will complain bitterly if your kids are exposed to ideas consistent with my religious views. You support a system that preaches the virtues of understanding each others' "cultures" yet at the same time demand that information regarding normal American Judeo-Christian culture be censored.

If the schools did not spend so much time on matters of evolution, slavery, homosexuality, etc. we would not be fussing about whether the kids are spending enough time in the classroom.

Cheers,
Jon

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Interesting stuff about this in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. I'm sure there is even more in primary literature. Children from poorer families do just as well at acquiring skills during the school year but have a huge amount of stasis or backsliding during breaks.



I understand that as a strong coorelation; but that doesn't make lack of funds the cause. My family had almost no discretionary income - never a chance of summer camps or extraciricular activities. I think the coorelation is a good reason to dig deeper, and suspect (my opinion only) that people with less money are possibly less likely to place value on education; being more likely to think that having the kid sit in front of TV all day. Just guessing; but my point is that it is not how much money they have, or how it is spent - it is how the time is spent in general. You can veg out, or explore the world - and a lot can be explored for free.
" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

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I understand that as a strong coorelation; but that doesn't make lack of funds the cause. My family had almost no discretionary income - never a chance of summer camps or extraciricular activities. I think the coorelation is a good reason to dig deeper, and suspect (my opinion only) that people with less money are possibly less likely to place value on education; being more likely to think that having the kid sit in front of TV all day. Just guessing; but my point is that it is not how much money they have, or how it is spent - it is how the time is spent in general. You can veg out, or explore the world - and a lot can be explored for free.



I suspect you are right, but ultimately the root cause may not be important. These kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds advance just as much as their peers from higher socio-economic background during the school year. It is during the breaks that the particular values of the families create achievement differences. Therefore, regardless of the souce of those differences, year-round school is going to lower the achievement gap (not erase, but lower).

I assume that is a good we want in our society, but I know not everybody would embrace it. Also, there are real costs as well, so there are serious cost/benefit calculations in play here.
"What if there were no hypothetical questions?"

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That's it! It's the evil left who, in association with Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and CNN, want to CONTROL YOUR CHILDREN! Probably even force them to believe in their twisted ideals of evolution, gravity and physics. Maybe even make them "go gay" with their insidious subliminal messages during assemblies. When, oh when, will conservatives stand up to the evils of education?



"MMM MMM MMM.... Barack Hussein Obama"
Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

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>Have you spent any time paying attention to the things that have been
>happening in the schools?

Yes; both my parents were teachers.

> You support a narrow one-sided approach

Not at all. As I have said time and time again, teach whatever creation myths you want in a religious history class. Teach it during one of the summer sessions so that kids who want it can take it.

>yet will complain bitterly if your kids are exposed to ideas consistent with
>my religious views.

Again, not at all. Cover Christianity (and Islam, and Buddhism, and Wiccan) in classes on religion. No problem.

>If the schools did not spend so much time on matters of evolution, slavery,
>homosexuality, etc. we would not be fussing about whether the kids are
>spending enough time in the classroom.

True; if we eliminate science and history, kids would have more time to learn what remains. Math and writing, I guess. I don't think that's a good goal.

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Based on a lot of writing in here (and I'm NOT referring to Airman1270), I'd have to say that a decent number of the more (ahem) right-thinking folks didn't pay much attention during writing, either.

Wendy P.
There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

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Based on a lot of writing in here (and I'm NOT referring to Airman1270), I'd have to say that a decent number of the more (ahem) right-thinking folks didn't pay much attention during writing, either.

Wendy P.



THHHHHWAPPPPPP

Ohhhhh that has gotta hurt:ph34r:




That wa a mighty fine bitch slap Wendy:ph34r::ph34r:

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