The Single Track School Year
As stated on the previous page the YRS simply spreads instructional days more evenly throughout the year. The YRS is designed to spread the summer vacation throughout the school year so that while there are the same number of school days, there are more frequent brakes, and therefore a significant reduction of the summer education lull. The evidence for how the YRS effects education shows equal or better academic achievement. Even though the evidence does not always say that single track YRS leads to academic improvement it still has several things going for it that the traditional school year does not.
The main advantage here is intersessions, the idea of which is to promote creative and experimental teaching as well as help struggling students catch up during the frequent breaks. For these students instead of failing a class and relearning the information in summer school, the student can come in to class during one of the shorter, more common breaks and pick up what they missed. According to the Washington Post article "Brigid Schulte -- The Case for Year-Round School" intersessions include teaching elementary students things like CPR, calligraphy, Japanese, rollerblading and complex art such as that of Jackson Pollock and Picasso. Additionally, a meta analysis in 1994 of 20 years of data showed that while stress levels are higher for teachers, there is a decreased burnout rate. For students in YRS, attitudes, attendance, and dropout rates have been shown to improve as well.
The main advantage here is intersessions, the idea of which is to promote creative and experimental teaching as well as help struggling students catch up during the frequent breaks. For these students instead of failing a class and relearning the information in summer school, the student can come in to class during one of the shorter, more common breaks and pick up what they missed. According to the Washington Post article "Brigid Schulte -- The Case for Year-Round School" intersessions include teaching elementary students things like CPR, calligraphy, Japanese, rollerblading and complex art such as that of Jackson Pollock and Picasso. Additionally, a meta analysis in 1994 of 20 years of data showed that while stress levels are higher for teachers, there is a decreased burnout rate. For students in YRS, attitudes, attendance, and dropout rates have been shown to improve as well.