Experts say that while year-round schools may have educational benefits, they are untenable given our attachment to summer vacation, which became the norm in the late 1800s.
Currently, only 3% of U.S. public schools are open all 12 months of the year, leaving most students and teachers looking forward to summer vacation.
Some blame the decline in popularity of year-round schools on misconceptions about the subject, while others say the move to year-round education could make life more difficult for families and teachers.
How did your summer vacation start?
Summer vacation became standard in American schools in the late 19th century, but there are many theories about how it came about.
“I don’t think anybody has an authoritative answer to this question,” says Paul von Hippel, a professor of public policy, sociology, statistics and data science at the University of Texas at Austin.
One idea that was considered in the past was to have children help harvest crops outside of school hours, but von Hippel said that wouldn’t work with the schedule, as most harvesting has to wait until fall.
Another theory is that the heat and poor ventilation in the school has something to do with it.
“Summer vacations came about primarily because of the heat, and it was harder to keep cool, especially 100 years ago,” said Jennifer Steele, a professor in the School of Education at American University.
Climate change has brought that issue back into question: Last school year, hundreds of schools across the country had to cancel scheduled school days due to extreme heat.
Schools that continue year-round education today
The prevalence of year-round schooling has declined further in recent years, from 6% of all public schools in the 1990s to 3% in 2018.
“The popularity of yearly calendars peaked in California in the late 1990s as a way to combat overcrowding in schools. California law made it very difficult to build new schools,” von Hippel said.
“At its peak, about 20 percent of California’s elementary schools adopted a type of staggered schedule, what’s called a multi-track year-round calendar, where different groups of kids went to school at different times, and they had a slightly shorter summer break and more time off throughout the rest of the year,” he added.
“The name year-round education gives the impression that children are in school all the time, but that’s not true. Very few schools in the country have school days that go beyond the usual 180 days,” von Hilpel said.
Instead, with a year-round schedule, students would have shorter break periods but more frequent breaks, such as nine weeks of school and three weeks off.
The schedule avoids some of the pitfalls of summer vacation, such as concerns about food insecurity for some students, and some believe it will help combat absenteeism and learning delays.
“If you can’t do a year-round or balanced calendar, show us attendance, and if there are days with high absenteeism, why not consider making those days work days or holidays?” asked James Pedersen, superintendent of Essex County Technical Schools and author of “Summer vs. School: The Possibilities of Year-Round School.”
While year-round education remains the exception, not the rule, the pandemic has led more people to consider alternative education options.
“COVID-19, I think, has brought renewed attention to this because everyone’s been hearing about the learning loss due to COVID-19,” Pedersen said, “and now we’re in a situation where we’re combining the learning loss from this summer with the learning loss due to COVID-19, both of which are real.”
The future of year-round schooling
Advocates for year-round education say local communities need to decide what’s best for them, but that COVID-19 has caused people to look more closely at their options.
“If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that … we can experiment with time, and we need to be thoughtful about how we use our time. During COVID-19, we’ve realized we no longer have full days of school, right?” […] “If you look across the country, everybody was working different schedules,” Pederson said.
“There is no research that shows kids need two-and-a-half months off,” he added.
But some say the benefits do not outweigh the drawbacks, and convincing the public, lawmakers and teachers to support year-round schools will not be easy.
“Summer is a time when teenagers traditionally get jobs and families go on vacation,” Steele said.
“I think the trend is to maintain the status quo of a three-month summer break because research that’s come out over the last decade or so shows that moving to year-round schools, to a year-round school system, without other changes being made, doesn’t translate to better student achievement and creates logistical challenges, so I don’t see that becoming a big trend in the near future,” Steele added.
