Year-Round Education System Analysis

In the United States, experimentation with the year-round education system began as early as the 1900s. The idea took root in the 1970s and 1980s when numerous studies had shown that American students demonstrated a nosedive in their academic performance on national and international exams (Raisch, 2008). As increasing emphasis is placed on education reform and academic performance, the movement toward the switch to year-round education continued to expand. Although year-round schools are still in the minority in the American education system, “the trend is growing” (Raisch, 2008), according to the National Association for Year-Round Education. “In the late 1980s, there were about 400 year-round schools in the country” and as of 2007, “nearly 2,800 U.S. …show more content…
Out of the country’s 52 million students, there are more than 2 million enrolled in the system as of today. Now, let’s take a closer look at the year-round education system and its proposition.
Year-round schooling is a term with negative connotation, often associated with misleading features such as the absence of summer traditions or endless school days. Contrary to traditional beliefs, year-round education actually involves the rearrangement of school calendars. Generally, students attending year-round schools usually spend the same number of days in school as non-year-round schools students. However, it is very possible for year-round schools to have a variety of schedules in term of how many school days are in a given year. “While most schools still operate according to the 180-day standard, some year-round schools are also extended-year schools, in which students attend classes between 200 and 240 days a year” (Chittom & Klassen, 2014). According to year-round education visionaries, a calendar configuration is not just one part of the system, but rather is a transformation toward a philosophy of lifelong continuous learning