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Year-Round Education
As of October 2005, 19 percent of kindergarten through grade twelve public school
students were attending 1,430 schools that operated year-round schedules in 156
school districts.
The effect, in terms of new school construction dollars saved as a result of multitrack,
year-round education operation, is impressive. If 20 percent of the 700,141 multitrack,
year-round education students are housed in excess of capacity at their school sites,
then more than $2.2 billion in construction costs is avoided by the state and local school
districts.
Year-round education is an alternative way to construct the school calendar. Both
traditional and year-round school calendars have approximately 180 days of instruction,
or the same number of instructional minutes, but year-round calendars spread
instructional and vacation periods throughout the year. For example, the most typical
instructional/vacation year-round pattern is called the “60/20 calendar,” 60 days of
instruction followed by 20 days of vacation, repeated three times during the school year.
Year-round education can be single-track or multitrack. A single-track, year-round
calendar simply changes the instructional/vacation sequence of the school year. All the
students and staff are in school or on vacation at the same time. But a multitrack, yearround
calendar does something quite different. It divides the entire student body and
staff into four or five different tracks. A school using a four-track system has, at any one
time, three of the four tracks attending school while the fourth track is on vacation.
When the fourth track of students returns from vacation, another track leaves. Thus, the
student population rotates in and out of school, one track replacing another on vacation,
which allows the enrollment of the school to exceed its capacity.
It is possible to have a three-track, multitrack, year-round education calendar, called a
Concept 6 calendar. Because this calendar has only 163 instructional days per year,
schools presently using Concept 6 have until 2012 to find alternative ways to house
students in excess of capacity. Schools not using Concept 6 calendars cannot adopt
this calendar.
Possible advantages associated with single-track, year-round education include its
potential to (1) improve academic achievement by eliminating summer regression;
(2) relieve teacher and student burnout; (3) provide new opportunities for teacher
training; and (4) offer frequent remedial and enrichment programs during intersessions.
However, as administrators try to achieve these potential benefits, they are faced with a
number of challenges. For example, coordinating family vacations, maintaining full
extracurricular and athletic programs, and lengthening the instructional year require
sophisticated and sensitive planning.
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