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<p>I heard you. In the last 2 weeks my 12 grade kid had only 1/2 of schedule because 9-11 grade students took the STAR test that nobody cares about it results. So, not much learning in the last 2 weeks for the whole school. Earlier in the year they already spent 1 week for CA HS Exit Exam.</p>
<p>coolweather: In our district, the seniors go to school for about a half hour each morning of the STAR testing. My son took the entire week off, and we used it do our out of state college visits. He didn’t miss a thing at school. (We would have done the college visits during spring break, but it was the week after Easter. Way too close to May 1st!)</p>
<p>Oooh boy… This was done for purely financial reasons, so we are going to have to make the best of it.
BUUT, I am totally against long or longer summers. The European system, which my family has experienced, works well. They have three terms a year with a month off between two terms and a month and a half off for their summer- plenty.<br>
Kids can work or intern or go to day camps on their month or month and a half long breaks, or vacation with their families.
The kids with this system do not forget what they have learned over breaks. Kids in Europe master much more advanced materials than American kids of the same age, and take more courses at the same time, too.
I have noticed that it takes K-8 students over a month to settle down and jell as classes after the long summer. This happens in HS, too.
AND Summer reading is a MUST!
Yikes…</p>
<p>I remember “Wilson’s 8 days”…(fuzzy about the details but I remember the phrase!)
When Pete Wilson was Governor the school year was increased by 8 days…maybe we will have Brown’s 8 days—same thing as Pete but in reverse.
If they reduce teaching days, will they reduce what is required to be taught? I think not.</p>
<p>I think an excellent compromise would be to allow those schools that get an API score of over 800 can shorten their school year. This would allow the children in the more affluent school districts to spend their summers in enrichment programs. Those under 650 would start year round schooling. This would put the public educational funds where they are needed, instead of spending some of it on bored children that already have all the advantages.</p>
<p>This also give the students incentive to try on the tests. I’m alway amazed at the begging that goes on at the local high school to get them not to bubble in cute designs.</p>
<p>Our district in SoCal had THREE weeks off for winter break. The reason given was that so many students went to Mexico to visit relatives…</p>
<p>I have been a teacher for 20 plus years. I have two children of my own who are very high achievers/gifted identified. For years, I have been advocating that low performing children should go to school year round, or at least Sept to June. High performers on the state standardized test/kids in the honors and AP classes could go October to May, since they don’t require the review time. Low performers would then have more time with teachers, in smaller classes. Every year, the Honors and AP English students have the most required summer reading, papers to write, etc. I think it’s all backward. Give the motivated students who have worked hard all year a break on that, and demand more of the kids who need the writing and reading practice. The hard workers get “punished” by having to do school as they are also trying to earn money and vacation with family (ever tried submitting a summer paper from a hotel with weak internet, when a summer deadline during vacation meant the difference between passing or failing? Totally unnecessary stress for parents and students alike!). These high achieving students don’t really benefit anyway, since they pretty much teach themselves the material and have no teacher interaction all summer - it’s just busy work for them with no value! The weaker students need more practice and time in school, and required reading so they don’t forget how, etc.</p>
<p>“The kids with this system do not forget what they have learned over breaks. Kids in Europe master much more advanced materials than American kids of the same age, and take more courses at the same time, too.”</p>
<p>Evidence? The PISA scores do NOT show that (for non-poverty kids).</p>
<p>It’s easy to get statistics you like when you cherry-pick data. You noted that 24% of children live in poverty. You cannot just remove the bottom 24% from a data set.</p>
<p>Sure can. And did. The reality is American schools (and American society) doesn’t serve poor kids well. End of story. But for everyone else (the vast majority of the population), American schools ranks close to the best in the world, shorter school year and all. Better than virtually all the European countries (except Finland, that has a 2.5% poverty rate).</p>
<p>Schools are not a cure for poverty. And attempting to address it through school is wrongheaded.</p>
<p>mini,
I was not addressing poverty. I think you did.</p>
<p>My experience was just that, experience with my own kids and their classmates in Europe vs same in US at very similar schools, similar socio-economic population of students. Anecdotal, but apples to apples. In Japan, we used an American school- same results as in US.</p>
<p>I am not anywhere near as well-versed as you about things based on research and stats. I guess that means I should not express my opinion or talk about my experience???</p>
<p>Teachers want to take the summer off for a variety of reasons. But they also wish the kids would stay on track and be more ready to learn. </p>
<p>Bottom-line: we are running out of money for education. Bad for everyone.</p>
<p>Fewer school days = higher daytime crime rate</p>
<p>You can talk about experience, of course. But the PISA data are well accepted internationally - the entire purpose was to get beyond anecdote so that comparisons based on real data can be made. And the data are conclusive that students not in poverty in the U.S. do better than virtually all their European counterparts (not in poverty), and the Japanese as well (not in poverty).</p>
<p>But the data is about tests…not education. It is theoretically possible that test prep in the United States is more efficacious, and education significantly worse (for students not in poverty). </p>
<p>If you want to know about what is actually learned, and what is actually retained, you want to test students when they haven’t had ANY test prep.</p>
<p>“BUUT, I am totally against long or longer summers. The European system, which my family has experienced, works well”</p>
<p>Sorry, but there is no such thing as a European educational system. Each country has its own. A few examples: Formal education in the UK starts when children are 5 (or less) while in Germany it starts 2 years later. In some countries students focus on a few subjects during the last few years at high school while students in other countries are facing a a lot of subjects until the very end. The math programs differ per country. Grammar (up to a very detailed level) is taught in some countries (sometimes already in lower school) while only the basics of grammar are taught in others (comparable to what my S was taught at a US school). Foreign language requirements also differ a lot per country. </p>
<p>As far as I know a lot of continental European students still have rather long holidays during the summer.</p>
<p>Teachandmom, your ideas may have merit but I predict that you will never see the creation of such a two-tiered public education system because opponents would criticize it as segregation based on social standing.</p>
<p>I should have been more specific. We lived in the UK. 16 years ago. No idea how it is there now.
TaiTai,
The summer break was something July 15-Sept. 1.
And the other breaks were 4 weeks. So they were in school longer total. Compared to US, the summer was shorter, the other breaks longer.</p>
<p>There are many factors and differences among all these systems. And it is hard to know what to use to compare their effectiveness.
Which variables account for the differences in effectiveness?
What things do you look at the measure effectiveness?</p>
<p>Anyway, I would pick the UK schedule over the US schedule any day, just based on our family’s experience with what we saw as effectiveness, and it was not more inconvenient.</p>
<p>There are oodles of academics trying to understand all this. However, when there is a money shortage, not sure they are being consulted. Limited resources, period.</p>
<p>Hope all California families make a good adjustment…</p>
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<p>Yes, it has. But the data is not supposed to be manipulated by pseudo scientists whose sole purpose if to fuel the agenda of apologists. The number quoted by Mini are not culled from a valid scientific source but nothing else than misleading “back of the napkin” calculations. </p>
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<p>Even if one could control for poverty, this element has to be defined and standardized. Does anyone really believe that the PISA reported levels of poverty are truly comparable? Does anyone believe that the USA has triple the number of people living in poverty than France does (22 versus 7 percent) although other statistics places this number on an even level at at about 14 to 15 percent. An old joke in France is that, when scientists looked at the level of consumption of the “poor” in the United States (read cars, color TV, cell phones, etc…) they suggested that their midde class could soon hope to reach the same level! </p>
<p>This said, I fully expect Mini to repeat the same numbers over and over. And then a few more times!</p>
<p>The long summer vacations that American students have has its origins in the 19th century when the U.S. was largely an agrarian society and family farms required the labor of their children during the growing season. This was considered more important than additional learning since the lack or mechanization made agriculture very labor intensive then and little need was seen for education beyond basic reading, writing and arithmetic.</p>
<p>We are, of course, a very different society today but we allow this anachronism of a 10 summer vacation to persist which requires teachers to spend the first month of the new school teaching them the material that the children forgot during their long break. Mathematics skills are particularly perishable and this annual need to spend time on relearning things they were studied the previous year is one reason why The U.S. fares so poorly in comparisons with countries such as Japan in Math skills.</p>
<p>I believe Minnesota requires 174 days in a K-12 school year (this includes built in snow days). Public schools begin the Tuesday after Labor Day as mandated by state law to benefit the resort owners for one last weekend. Private school begins the last week in May. Both usually finish up the first week of June.</p>
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<p>If that were the case, all public educators would flock to the private schools. Such a schedule would represent pure bliss for union leaders. They might even abandon their CBA extortion schemes. ;)</p>