Obama Nixes Traditional Long School Summer Vacations

@Robert Gentel,

Quote:

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.

the added benefit is that you need less classroom space to teach the same number of kids...think of it as hot bunking. However, this is a massive change to impose, it is resisted.

I am not opposed to year round schools, and I think that the argument for them is sound. What I do not approve of is trying to get the number of instruction hours per year up to what some other nations do. I do not think that American kids would do well being in school that many hours a year, when our idea of education is of the very myopic three R's variety.

1 Reply

@dlowan,

Other holidays: 4-5 days around Thanksgiving (two-three days off plus the weekend), ~2 weeks off around Christmas, 1 week off around Easter (spring break), and then sundry three-day weekends. (4-5 of 'em?) We also have "disaster days" for when there is too much snow or a power outage or something like that. A certain number just come out of the regular school year, then past that, more time gets tacked on (scheduled holidays are canceled, or they have to go in on a Saturday, or the last day of school is pushed back).

Yeah, part of the reason for/ appeal of summer camp is to have someone watch kids while parents work. There are a whole lot of summer-long childcare options too (summer camp is usually more finite, a week or two).

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@hawkeye10,

Not all American schools employ myopic three-R-variety education.

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@sozobe,

there are always exceptions, but overwhelmingly the practice today is to teach primarily the high stakes standard tests. The careers of those running and working in the schools depend upon good test scores.

We are starting to come of this latest failure of "education reform"though. For instance here in Washington state we have just ditched our WASL test. The main argument used is that it is unfair to minorities, that the minority status places them at a disadvantage in standardized tests, but there are other stated reasons. I think that the primary reason though is that increasingly educators realize that high stakes testing is a failure, and it is time to move away from them. Doing the dog and pony show for the politicians and parents sucks up way too much time, and a lot of important education does not happen as a result.

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@hawkeye10,

I agree that No Child Left Behind and the importance that test scores have taken on have been detrimental to American education. (I've had the good luck to be involved in schools that do a really nice job despite those limitations.)

It seems like that's an argument for more time, though. More time would allow schools to relax a bit and teach all the required stuff PLUS add in some extras they haven't had time for while keeping their eyes on the test scores.

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@Brandon9000,

From the article, I'm not sure what problem they're trying to address. I think that arbitrarily tacking on extra hours at school, or extra school days, or both, probably won't solve many problems, except for parents who are struggling to pay for day care.

If the problem is that kids aren't getting a quality education, then they need to figure out what's keeping kids from learning, and I don't think it's instruction time.

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@sozobe,

I've said before that No Child Left Behind translates to "No Child Gets Ahead". The classes are bogged down trying to teach the slowest kid in the class.

IMO, we need to place kids in appropriate learning environments, which means that gifted kids, average kids, and lower performing kids don't all get lumped into the same class.

1 Reply

@sozobe,

Quote:

It seems like that's an argument for more time, though. More time would allow schools to relax a bit and teach all the required stuff PLUS add in some extras they haven't had time for while keeping their eyes on the test scores.

we do pretty good with early education, but lose them beginning at middle school. The problem with your theory is that if you ask a group of high schoolders what they think about school a high percentage of them will say something to the effect that it is one step up from prison. expanding school hours would feel like increased punishment to them. Not the result that we need.

I think that your instincts are right, but we need to fix some stuff in education before we do that. We need to get to the bottom of why so many teens tune out of school, and just go through the motions, and in many districts they don't even do that...they drop out as soon as they legally can.

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@DrewDad,

That's so dangerous, though. Tracking was big when I was in grad school for education, just starting to fall out of favor, because of lots of recent studies that we looked at in classes. There was a lot of scary stuff about kids being stuck in their tracks -- that is, if they were put in a "lower performing" group in kindergarten or first grade, they stayed in it throughout their education. Whereas if there was more interaction between various skill levels, that didn't happen to the same degree -- a lot more kids' performance improved.

What was especially scary about that was that there was a high correlation between socio-economic background and where the younger kids were placed in tracks -- that is, a lot of times it was the poor kids who were put in the "lower performing" tracks and stayed there throughout. Whereas they'd often do quite well in other circumstances.

Then there are also, counter-intuitively, gains for higher-functioning kids when they are in a position to help their lower-functioning peers. Knowledge is reinforced, and other good stuff happens. (My kid, who's been ID'ed as gifted and gets special services for that, loves helping other kids and I think gets a lot of benefits from it.)

The whole education problem is a big one, I've become convinced that the single biggest variable is simply the quality of the teachers. (This has been my view for the past 15-20 years and I'm seeing more and more studies about it.) It's a really hard variable to control for, though.

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@sozobe,

Quote:

That's so dangerous, though. Tracking was big when I was in grad school for education, just starting to fall out of favor, because of lots of recent studies that we looked at in classes. There was a lot of scary stuff about kids being stuck in their tracks -- that is, if they were put in a "lower performing" group in kindergarten or first grade, they stayed in it throughout their education. Whereas if there was more interaction between various skill levels, that didn't happen to the same degree -- a lot more kids' performance improved

tracking ended because the parents of the slower kids raised hell. Everybody is above average according to the parents, trying to tell them that their kid is not fabulous feels like oppression to them. You are right that smarter kids enjoy helping the slower kids, and get a lot out of it. But you gloss over the fact that the fact kids need to be given as much to chew as they can handle, they need to be challanged. My kids usually take three AP classes at a time, if they got put back in the slow classes they would be deprived. It would not be fair to them.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

No, it was people who were appalled by what the studies indicated that raised the biggest stink, from what I remember. (I was one of 'em.) The parents of the kids who were worst-served by this stuff tended to be the least involved parents, and were pretty apathetic about it in general. Least-involved parents --> kids who came to school with deficits --> kids who were put in low-performing tracks --> kids who stayed there.

Vs. kids who came to school with deficits, got a good education, and broke out of that pattern. (Note, I'm not saying that all of them did, but enough did that the whole "marked for life in kindergarten" thing was appalling.)

I don't think AP needs to be taken away or anything like that. I'm all for extra services on top of the regular classroom, whether for gifted kids or kids who need extra help.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

DrewDad wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
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.

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

That's a pretty pathetic argument.

My argument boils down to:

1. Kids should be given more time off for playing than adults, so that they can have a childhood.
2. The long summer vacation is a wonderful experience for children

neither point of which seems pathetic to me.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

DrewDad wrote:

Setanta wrote:
is this just another example of conservative hysteria?

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.

I oppose it because I don't like the idea expressed. Anything else is just your unproven and unprovable speculation.

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@Brandon9000,

An example of a controversial issue where Brandon agreed with President Obama would be interesting to hear about in this context.

1 Reply

@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

I oppose it because I don't like the idea expressed. Anything else is just your unproven and unprovable speculation.

This would accurately describe your claim about Mr. Obama "nixing" anything in regard to local school board policies--except that your "speculation" is so patently false, that it would be embarrassing--had you any shame.

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@sozobe,

I'm assuming most of this research was done before the present "teach to the test" mentality, though.

I'm dubious that tacking additional hours onto the school day or days onto the school year will be beneficial. How many kids are going to drop out because their family needs them working?

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@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

My argument boils down to:

1. Kids should be given more time off for playing than adults, so that they can have a childhood.
2. The long summer vacation is a wonderful experience for children

neither point of which seems pathetic to me.

Neither point is pathetic, but the argument is pathetic. You need to show that increasing time in school is less beneficial than summer vacation. What you're saying is that you like things the way they were, which is just an argument to tradition.

1 Reply

@ebrown p,

ebrown p wrote:

An example of a controversial issue where Brandon agreed with President Obama would be interesting to hear about in this context.

You really can never argue a case on point can you? Your whole strategy consists of changing the subject.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
I oppose it because I don't like the idea expressed. Anything else is just your unproven and unprovable speculation.

This would accurately describe your claim about Mr. Obama "nixing" anything in regard to local school board policies--except that your "speculation" is so patently false, that it would be embarrassing--had you any shame.

A bunch of statements irrelevant to the proposition being discused. Obama proposed shortening the long summer vacation. I'm not sure how much he wants to shorten it because the article doesn't say, but I'm assuming he wants to shorten it significantly. I disagree for the reasons stated. If you can't argue my actual proposition, then I'm not sure what you're doing in this thread.

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@Brandon9000,

starting threads based on assumptions will usually end in disaster, Brandon.

let's see how this one fares...

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Obama Nixes Traditional Long School Summer Vacations

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