Year Round School Essay

Nelson Mandela, philanthropist and former president of South Africa, said “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” What better way to arm the students than by using a system that helps them learn more? Year-round schooling was first an idea implemented in 1968 to accommodate for growing populations. When Californian schools switched in 1972, it fueled a debate that still has not died down today. People want to know if this system of schooling is truly more academically beneficial than the nine month alternative. Year-round school is indeed more academically beneficial because it eradicates the large amount of knowledge lost over the summer, causes students to do better overall, and can be worked around

Natalie Stechyson says in her article “Students in year round schools do better, study shows” that “Teachers who can dive right into new material without having to spend weeks reviewing concepts students would normally forget over the summer.” The first few weeks of school are notoriously slow for everyone because teachers have to spend so much time doing the things that had previously been considered easy. This is due to the enormous loss of information over the summer. A shorter summer break, a result of the year round schooling system, would create less loss of information and allow the teachers to jump right into new information. Reporters are not the only people noticing the decrease in knowledge over the summer. Paul Anderson, a teacher at Roberta Bondar Public School in Canada, explained to the author how summer break had hurt the students, saying that “When he used to teach at a traditional school it would take three weeks of review after summer break before his students were ready to conquer new math concepts.” Some people may try to deny the amount of information students lose over the summer, but it is hard to do so when evidence of it is coming right out of a teacher’s mouth. Anderson says directly that such a long summer break hurts children academically. An obvious solution is to shorten the break by using the year round schooling