Obama Nixes Traditional Long School Summer Vacations

We have optional year round schooling here and both the kids and families love it. Year round does not mean the kids work harder; they have the exact same number of school days with four long breaks instead of one very long summer. Parents love the greater flexibility in scheduling family vacations. The kids like the more regular schedule and they tend to forget less in a three week layoff than they do in a three month summer break.

But Obama's opinion is meaningless since school policy is set locally.

I know a few kids that go to a year round school and both they and their parents love it.

They get from Thanksgiving to New Years as one of their breaks which makes a whole lot of sense to me), they get a six week break during the summer and then a few shorter breaks during the year.

I think it's a great idea.

Conservatives sound silly when their only refrain is "change=bad"! "Obama=bad"!

Argue the point on its merits; don't just have some kind of knee-jerk conservagasm because Obama expressed a viewpoint.

I hear that teachers do not like it as well, as it makes it more difficult to find work during the off weeks....on big block of time is more worthwhile to potential employers. You don't mention that a whole lot of reformers want to go to year round PLUS add a lot of instruction days......the reason they have not gotten this in most cases is because of the increased costs, money that school districts do not have.

OBAMA is on record (from what I recall) that we should vastly increase instruction time, thus Brandon is on point.

I didn't say change is bad. I said this change is bad and I said exactly why I think so. Go read my post again.

Exactly.

i thought obama wanted to destroy the american democracy and institute a socialist state

problem solved, the government rules all and makes all the decision

i'm really looking forward to the may day parades

As a child and adult, I've always loved the long summer vacation, but I didn't have troubles with learning or retention and neither did either of my children, so as you said, it was simply a time to rest, relax, have fun and look forward to the new school year.

But for students with learning disabilities, the long summer vacation represents a hurdle to learning and retention. For those students, every September and October are spent reteaching and relearning basic concepts - especially in math - which is cumulative so new information can't really be added or absorbed until the old information is mastered.

I do the like the school schedule here in England - six weeks on - 1 week off - six weeks on - two weeks off for Christmas - six weeks on - one week off - six more weeks on - two weeks off for Easter - six weeks on - one week off - six weeks on - six weeks off for summer vacation
*(approximately - sometimes it's ten days instead of one week)

Anyway - I love it as a parent - and I'd love it even more as a teacher. During that LONG uninterrupted span from after Christmas to Easter it's really, really hard to keep the kids motivated and then as I said, a lot of these kids come back after the summer break having forgotten everything and you use about six or eight weeks - or about twenty percent of the school year - reviewing what you did the year before.

Somebody care to explain to me just how Mr. Obama can "nix" traditional summer vacation periods? Or is this just another example of conservative hysteria?

So your argument boils down to "Brandon enjoyed summer camp"?

That's a pretty pathetic argument.

The schedule in England is very similar to what we have in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe):
- summer holidays six weeks (from June to September, varies from state to state),
- one week in autumn,
- two weeks at Christmas,
- two weeks at Easter,
- one week in autumn.
(That might vary in a few states, e.g. no holidays at autrumn, but three at Easter)

Yes.

Obama expressed an opinion, so the conservatives MUST oppose it.

I suppose extrapolating to "conservatives" may be a bit much. Brandon must oppose it, apparently.

So...how long ARE the American summer holidays now?

That's about what we have....

Three months -- approximately Memorial Day (end of May) to Labor Day (beginning of September), though not exactly and with a lot of variation by district.

Whoa!!! That's LOOOOOOOONG!!!

That's a quarter of the YEAR!

What are the other holidays like?

You Mericans be weird.

Practically no holidays for adults....and forever for kids.

Must be hard to adjust when they go to work.

Is that why so many kids get sent to summer camps? Because parents have to have someone take care of the kids while they work?

The year-round schools I know of employed the teachers for the whole year by rotating when kids are on vacation (i.e. not all at the same time).

I think it's a no-brainer.

american schools (governed by local elected non-qualified school boards) are an anachronism to the days of yore when the family farm was the economy. children were needed on the farm for the summer months. In these modern times, the school boards remain the control (again without qualification) and old habits are hard to break. If it was good enough for grandpa he should be good enough today. There are quite a few really stupid areas of american life that fall in this pit of irrationality.

Non-qualified relative to what? Have you read the constitutional requirements for Supreme Court Justices? I mean, why should I be called unqualified? I was a kid, myself, at one time.

Well, that farm stuff would have been true in Oz, too...and we used to have about eight weeks of summer holidays....it is shorter now.