It is June! That means summer has officially arrived. Many students get a long vacation from school. Some schools have longer breaks than others. Sometimes, during long breaks, students may forget what they learned over the summer. With such a long time without school during the summer, some students even get bored!
Did you know that some schools try to solve these problems by going “year-round”? That means that they don’t really take a long summer vacation. Instead, they follow a different school-year calendar. Many year-round schools use a nine-weeks-on, three-weeks-off schedule. So although they don’t have a “summer vacation” the way traditional schools do, students do still get breaks throughout the year and have the same number of school days overall.
People see pros and cons to this approach. For one, supporters say that when breaks are shorter, students will forget less. They also say it’s a good use of school facilities, because otherwise schools are just sitting there empty all summer long.
On the other hand, critics of year-round school question if “summer slide” [students forgetting much of what they learned over summer vacation] is a real issue. They wonder, if students forget what they learned so quickly, did they even learn it at all? Also, programs such as band and sports suffer from year-round school due to their untraditional schedule.
What do you think? Do you think schools should adopt a year-round model?
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