year round schooling
216581556
Replication data for: The Impact of Year Round Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mandatory School Calendar Conversions
Steven McMullen Kathryn Rouse
214269595
YEAR ROUND SCHOOLING: DOES IT REDUCE SUMMER SLIDE FOR ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED STUDENTS?
ICERI2019 Proceedings
Wondimu Ahmed Xin Liang Kristin L K Koskey Nidaa Makki
44177114
The Impact of Year Round Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mandatory School Calendar Conversions
In 2007, 22 Wake County, North Carolina traditional calendar schools were switched to year round calendars, spreading the 180 instructional days evenly across the year. This paper presents a human capital model to illustrate the conditions under which these calendars might affect achievement. We then exploit the natural experiment to evaluate the impact of year round schooling on student achievement using a multi level fixed effects model. Results suggest that year round schooling has essentially no impact on academic achievement of the average student. Moreover, when the data are broken out by race, we find no evidence that any racial subgroup benefits from year round schooling. (JEL H75, I21, I28, J24)
Steven McMullen Kathryn Rouse
55347259
Multi Track Year Round Schooling as Cost Saving Reform: Not Just a Matter of Time
In the face of school crowding and fears about inequality inducing summer learning loss, many schools have started to adopt multi track year round school calendars, which keep the same number of school days, but spread them more evenly across the calendar year. This change allows schools to support a larger student population by rotating which students are on break at any point in time. While year round schooling can save money, the impact on academic achievement is uncertain and only recently have large scale studies become available for policy makers. This brief examines research on the effects of multi track year round schooling, focusing on two rigorously executed case studies. This research gives little support for claims that year round schooling will boost student achievement. Except as a remedy for highly over crowded schools, year round schooling seems to have little impact on achievement, and has even been shown to decrease achievement, especially among the most high risk student populations.
Education Finance and Policy
Jennifer Graves Steven McMullen Kathryn Rouse
154436041
Effects of year round schooling on disadvantaged students and the distribution of standardized test performance
Using detailed longitudinal data for the state of California, this paper estimates the effect of year round school calendars on nationally standardized test performance of traditionally disadvantaged students. The student subgroups studied in this paper are: low socioeconomic status, limited English proficiency, Hispanic and Latino, and African American students. I find significant negative effects of multi track year round calendars on academic achievement for all subgroups examined, with only the limited English proficiency student subgroup producing unreliable estimates. Negative and significant results for another type of year round calendar, single track, are also found for the full sample of students and low socioeconomic status students.
Jennifer Graves
30668935
Announcement: Community Preventive Services Task Force Finding for Year Round Schooling to Increase Health Equity
The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recently posted new information about its finding of insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of yearround schooling in improving academic achievement. The information for "Health Equity: Year Round Schooling" is available at https:/www.thecommunityguide.org/findings/ health equity year round schooling. Established in 1996 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the CPSTF is an independent, nonfederal panel of public health and prevention experts whose members are appointed by the director of CDC. The CPSTF provides information for a wide range of persons who make decisions about programs, services, and other interventions to improve population health. Although CDC provides administrative, scientific, and technical support for the CPSTF, the recommendations developed are those of the task force and do not undergo review or approval by CDC. Erratum
MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
55328668
School crowding, year round schooling, and mobile classroom use: Evidence from North Carolina
This study exploits a unique policy environment and a large panel dataset to evaluate the impact of school crowding on student achievement in Wake County, NC. We also estimate the effects of two education policy initiatives that are often used to address crowding: multi track year round calendars and mobile classrooms. We estimate a multi level fixed effects model to identify effects that are not confounded by other school, family, and individual characteristics. Results suggest that severely crowded schools have a negative impact on reading achievement but have no discernable impact on math achievement. Both mobile classrooms and year round calendars are found to have a small negative impact on achievement in the absence of crowding, but a positive impact in crowded schools, though these policies are only able to partially offset the negative impact of crowding.
Steven McMullen Kathryn Rouse
158270677
Year Round Schooling
Matthew Lynch
155008310
YEAR ROUND SCHOOLING
Changing a school district's calendar to facilitate year round schooling would be a major undertaking for any school district. One must wonder if such drastic change needs to be made if there are few academic advantages to such a change. Should a district seek to change from the traditional school calendar to a year round calendar without substantial evidence that such a calendar would improve student achievement? What obstacles would the district face, and more importantly, what benefits would be gained by changing from a traditional school calendar to a year round schedule? Other than some isolated cases, most literature does not show a correlation between a year round school calendar and increased academic success of the students. There is not enough evidence to prove to a district that year round schooling would increase academic achievement and save on over all costs to the district. Year Round Schooling 3 Chapter I Introduction Free public education began in the United States in the middle of the 1800s. At that time, far more than half the population lived in rural areas and farming was a major occupation for fifty to sixty percent of the nation (Kennedy, Cohen, Bailey, 2010) According to Juliet Lapidos (2008) other factors also played a major role. Lapidos stated, "Attendance was below 50% in the summer months and physicians feared students would spread diseases common during the heat of the summer" (p. 1) Buildings being poorly ventilated, student and teacher burnout and the wealthy vacationing during the summer were other traditional reasons for schools to be closed during the summer months (Lapidos) Over the years, the United States gradually became an urban country. The 1920 census showed for the first time in American history that over fifty percent of the population lived in cities (Kennedy, Cohen, Bailey, 2010) The dawn of the twentieth century also ushered in new technologies that changed farming. Tractors began to replace draw animals and threshers and reapers made the previous work of many people able to be accomplished by only a few. These advancements continued to fuel the trend of families moving to cities and suburbs in search of work they could no longer find on rural farms. Because farming continued to make technological leaps that reduced the necessity of farmhands, fewer people needed to stay on farms throughout the nineteen hundreds. By the year 2000, fewer than three percent of the American population listed agriculture or farming as their main occupation (Kennedy, Cohen, Bailey, 2010) Although there has been a major population shift in the United States and a great decline in the number of people employed as farmers, the school calendar has not changed in most public school districts. Most schools end Year Round Schooling 4 within a week or two of Memorial Day in May and do not resume until the week or two around Labor Day in September. Many aspects of education, including best practice and methodology, have changed since the introduction of free public education. The basic study of reading, writing, and arithmetic has been altered and enhanced several times throughout the twentieth century. Whether it was because of the nuclear and space race with the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s, racial desegregation, integration, and forced busing of the 1960s and 1970s, the new computer technology of the 1980s or the explosion of the internet in the 1990s and the twenty first century, subject matter may still be consistent but the delivery of the subject matter has changed drastically. As with other institutions, every time a crisis or technological change has occurred, the dynamics of the institution changes, either to counteract the new difference or to strength the institution. The reason the school calendar was originally set up in the current format has changed significantly. Not only what is being taught but also what is required of the current students in our schools has changed markedly over time. The school calendar has remained the most unchanged area in education. Sault Ste. Marie Area Public Schools is looking for ways to improve student academic achievement and saving on fiscal costs. Would changing to yearround schooling help the Sault Schools achieve either of these goals? Statement of the Problem Schools have run on the same calendar for over one hundred and fifty years. Students go to school for nine months and then have three months off. This much time off seems like it would hinder student learning, and therefore, progress and achievement. In many classes and grades, the first month is spent simply reviewing the previous year's content and not exploring Year Round Schooling 5 new curriculum. With curriculum changing and requirements becoming more and more rigorous there is less time available in the fall for review, and if current trends continue, this review time will decrease not increase. Although it may seem obvious that changing to year round schooling would fix this problem that is not necessarily the case. Many barriers are involved when changing a school calendar for a community. The current economy is a major consideration when deciding whether or not to change the traditional schedule. Many students have summer jobs which help fuel the local economy and satisfy the needs of employers while providing services to customers. Therefore, the economic cost of altering the calendar and having school open all year is a major factor when districts take up the idea of year round school. Teacher contracts pose another challenge to implementing a new calendar. Though the number of instruction days and the number of students per class in a year may not be determined by faculty contracts, teacher wages and benefits are. A decided change in the school year would necessitate a new contract that would need to be negotiated, and this negotiation might make the bottom line of year round school too costly for a district or community. Another major impact is the simple change of tradition. Considering that most people do not take to change very easily or quickly, to alter something as ingrained as the school year could be a task of tantamount proportion. Whether it is a same spring break each year or the scheduling of a major sporting event or community event, most schools have very rich traditions and strong ties with the local community. Changing the calendar could have a major impact on these traditions and cause more pressures on communities that already have obstacles to community cohesion and
Allan C Anderson
157400536
The Impact of Year Round Schooling on Teacher Turnover and Quality
In this paper, we evaluate the extent to which year round school (YRS) calendars impact teacher turnover and quality. To the extent that YRS calendars are received positively (or negatively) by teachers, they may affect the ability of schools to recruit and retain high quality teachers. Additionally, we focus on a particular type of YRS, multi track, which may affect the number of teachers needed. Depending on who leaves or who is hired, this can also impact the quality of the teacher pool. Understanding this relationship is important for policymakers given high rates of teacher turnover, particularly in schools serving disadvantaged populations, and evidence that such turnover can impact student outcomes. As the literature thus far on the academic impacts of YRS has found largely heterogeneous effects along a number of dimensions, it is likely that teacher effects may exhibit such heterogeneity as well. In our study, we make use of detailed data from two locations: California and Wake County, North Carolina. Both locations have widely implemented YRS due to school crowding, but have differing student demographics, and have been found to have differing academic impacts of YRS calendars. We find that schools in both locations hire additional teachers to accommodate the multi track YRS model. However, in California, where YRS is implemented in particularly disadvantaged populations, the teacher quality is diminished, while in North Carolina, where YRS has been implemented in more affluent areas, teacher quality does not suffer. This is consistent with previous literature on YRS calendars indicating that the context in which YRS is implemented is particularly important. [JEL Classification: I21, J45]
Jennifer Graves