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| Information Age students need year-round schools |
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Information Age students need year-round schools by Adrienne T. Washington
Byline: Adrienne T. Washington How do we expect children to learn everything they must know in today's high-tech, global society in essentially five hours of instruction a day for five days of the week for nine months of the year? After all, in this Information Age, the World Wide Web never sleeps, no matter the remotest village in the world. Just think: Some high school students spend more hours in a week working at their part-time jobs than they do sitting in a classroom. It's time to stop talking about changing our outdated methods of teaching and actually administering radical reforms. It's time for year-round schooling. So kudos to the Fairfax County school system for taking up the calendar charge. This weekend, watch out for those frantic Fairfax County parents who will no doubt be buying school supplies, clothes and lunchbox goodies for their children's first day of classes on Monday. That's right. Five elementary schools - Franconia Elementary in the Alexandria area of the county, Graham Road Elementary and Glen Forest Elementary in Falls Church, who will join Timber Lane Elementary in Falls Church and Dogwood Elementary in Reston - are adopting a "modified" year-round school calendar beginning July 30. "The most important thing for us here at Graham Road is that we believe this modified calendar will give our students more opportunity for continuous learning," Principal Cora Harper told The Washington Times' Matthew Cella. She is absolutely correct. With the heightened emphasis on standardized test scores and the implementation of rigorous, mandatory tests for promotion and graduation now being required in states like Virginia, students need all the extra instruction they can get. As it is, some teachers complain that 180 days is not nearly enough time to cover all the material they are required to impart each year. Some students, particularly those attending substandard schools in urban and rural districts, may never make the grade without consistent, competent and continual instruction. Which is it why it makes sense for the county to invest the extra resources - about $250,000 per school - for the year-round calendar exclusively for Project Excel schools in the future. Students attending 20 elementary schools identified as the poorest-performing are part of that program. Timber Lane Elementary was the first area school to implement such a program in 1998. The students enrolled in the Fairfax County pilot program received 180 days of instruction but have two- to three-week "intercessions" off in October, January and April as well as the entire month of July. The also get the traditional one-week breaks during the winter and spring holiday seasons. At Timber Lane this year, Principal Anita Blain said all of the school's fifth-graders passed the state's Standards of Learning (SOL) tests with a 70 percent score or better. The school switched to the modified calendar the same year the tests were implemented. No other school district in our area offers year-round instruction. But Virginia is one of few states that provides extra funding for districts that not only hold summer school programs, but year-round programs. The Timber Lane program, which includes optional remedial and enrichment classes during the breaks, cost the county an additional $142,000 in transportation and salaries to administer the first year. Some parents complain that year-round schooling disrupts family schedules and takes time away from other summer enrichment activities, such as camp and traveling. Other parents may view the longer school year as a safe child-care option. While the school environment does provide necessary adult supervision for a major portion of a child's day, the real value of year-round schooling is that it is less disruptive to the educational process, to say nothing of maintaining the child's daily routine. And let's be real: Children need routines. Their predictable daily regimens can be the most valuable teachers about boundaries, limitations and responsibilities. Most teachers agree that students simply retain more information with breaks shorter than the 12-week brain-drain hiatus each summer. So teachers waste a lot of time in the fall reviewing old information. Since most school districts in this area do not offer year-round schooling, parents are increasingly taking advantage of special summer school programs wherever offered. By the end of the summer, many children will readily admit that they are bored and anxious to return to class. But they will not be ready to pick up their lessons unless their parents have attempted to do a little home schooling over the summer with reading incentives, computer sessions, field trips or family learning projects. Students in most industrialized countries attend school two to 10 weeks longer than their American counterparts. But the number of U.S. school districts that now have year-round schooling reportedly has grown from 400 schools in 14 states to more than 2,700 schools in 41 states since 1986. The longer school year will definitely boost academic achievement. Common sense says it will. The more you practice something, the better you can do it. Do students today really need three months off from school each summer? Only if we want them to fail miserably in the Information Age. |
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