Calendar wars: Aren’t we fighting the wrong battle?
Like Cobb County, my local school district moves to a new “balanced” calendar next year with a shorter summer and two mid-year breaks.
And like many parents in Cobb, I am not thrilled.
A longer summer suits our family better than the abbreviated one. I didn’t object because I figured the new calendar may benefit some families.
But it’s probably a mistake for Cobb or other systems to promote their new balanced calendar as a boost to academics.
The research isn’t decisive that spreading out the same number of days over more months makes a large or lasting difference in how much students learn.
Both those in favor of the balanced and traditional calendars can cite reputable research to bolster their arguments.
The pro year-round camp points to Karl Alexander of Johns Hopkins University who found that disadvantaged children make no academic progress in the summer, a deficiency that he says reverberates throughout their schooling.
Alexander concluded that about two-thirds of the ninth-grade academic achievement gap between poor students and more advantaged peers can be explained by the differences in their summer experiences in elementary school, a period of loss that he calls the summer slide.
While low-income children begin school with lower achievement scores, Alexander found that they progress at about the same rate as their more affluent peers. But the summer break — when middle class kid go to art camp, swim team and museum trips — widens the gap.
Alexander found that poor children don’t have many learning-rich environments in their lives outside of school; their parents lack the wherewithal or resources to turn summer into a learning laboratory. The longer low-income children are away from school, the more they fall behind, he said.
The parents who prefer the traditional calendar cite the work of Ohio State University sociologist Paul von Hippel. While von Hippel agreed that the learning of poor children slows down in the summer, he didn’t see any lasting benefit to those students from a year-round schedule.
Using national data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, von Hippel found year-round calendars are somewhat ineffective. Yes, children do learn more quickly during the summer, but they learn more slowly at other times of year, said von Hippel.
He found that over a 12-month period, the children in year-round programs learn no more than children following a traditional school calendar. His conclusion: Year-round calendars don’t counter the summer slide; they just redistribute it across the rest of the year.
The reason may be that the key is not when children sit in a class but what they do while in class.
Yet, academic achievement has never been uppermost in any setting of school calendars. With its long summer break, the traditional calendar is an artifact of a time when children were needed to work the fields.
Nor are academics a major consideration in most of the tinkering today with the standard 180-day school year.
If academics were the priority, the school calendar would be longer, says Harris Cooper, a Duke University professor who leads the national research on year-round schools.
“I think our kids would be going to school for more days,” says Cooper. “And there would be flexibility in the length of the school day so that kids would be spending more time in school each day. But no matter how much time kids are in school, what you do with that time is the most critical aspect.”
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So why switch to a balanced calendar if enhanced student performance isn’t a certain outcome?
My own system touted the change as a recruitment tool, saying teachers liked it better. While there’s no hard data on whether school calendars affect teacher retention, Cooper says teachers appear to prefer the more frequent and shorter breaks to the longer summer.
In the end, it’s the parents who often become the biggest fans of year-around and balanced calendars, says Cooper.
“If you look at parent satisfaction in districts where this has been in place for a while, the parents are quite satisfied,” he says. “For middle-class families where both parents work outside of the home, this is a better fit. Schools have always responded to broader economic and lifestyle issues. If we were constructing a school calendar from scratch, there would be no way that we would pick the one we have now.”
That many parents tout the opportunities provided in balanced calendars to take cheaper trips to Disney during the fall and spring breaks doesn’t bother Cooper.
“If somebody else argues that this calendar prevents them from taking a vacation in August,” he says, “somebody else can say that they prefer it because they can take cheaper vacations to Disney in October.”
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91 comments Add your comment
Gwinnett HS Teacher
November 23rd, 2009
12:01 pm
Maureen – I wasn’t suggesting that Critical Care Nurse wasn’t welcomed to make comments on this blog. My point was that we (teachers) tend to speak about our hard work and endless responsibilities because this is an EDUCATION blog. That was all.
Critcal Care Nurse
November 23rd, 2009
12:30 pm
Gwinnett HS Teacher: My comments are not at all about you NOT working hard…But it was about the working hard/we need a break NOT being a legitimate reason to change the school year. This is a reason that many teachers, administratrators and BOE have used as a reason to have frequent breaks. My example was used to show that the difficulty of the job is not a legitimate argument for more breaks, not an implication that teachers don’t work hard. To make it simpler, the world world does not add more breaks for other professions just because they are tired.or because they need a break. If these calendar changes are truly of value, so valuable as to cause huge impact to the lives of so many parents and children, then they must have legitimate reasons for being made.
Maureen Downey
November 23rd, 2009
12:35 pm
Gwinnett, Thanks. That is how I read your comment, but I didn’t want anyone new to the blog to interpret it otherwise. We tend to be a straightforward and vocal bunch here, which I appreciate since I am direct. (I blame it on my New Jersey childhood.) But I didn’t want anyone new to our group to read unwanted intent into the comment.
Maureen
Gwinnett HS Teacher
November 23rd, 2009
12:41 pm
Critical Care Nurse – I assure you, I was not consulted about any changes in our school calendar! And, moreso – if I did have any input, it would not be a selfish decision on my part because my job is time-consuming and demanding! I knew that going into the profession. We were, however given 3 calendars and asked which one we liked best. I tend to think that “they” (those in charge) knew which calendar they wanted, because 2 of the 3 choices were ridiculous!
Maureen – I’m originally from New York, so, I always get “chastised” for being too blunt!
Badger
November 23rd, 2009
12:50 pm
Its really interesting the comments that are made here, IE: we need a break, we are sick, we are tired. I commend all teachers, as its a job that I would not do under any circumstances. But these types of comments really grate on my nerves and in my conversations, the nerves of other people also. We work year round, with two weeks vacation and holidays off for the most part. I know teachers go back to work weeks before school starts and work weeks after school ends, but they still get more time off than most workers and make, at least in my district a good salary. So those comments of being tired and sick and needing a break really falls on deaf ears. What everyone should be complaining about is the way the BOE members we elected lied. One example is the chairman whose election platform was to be against a balanced calendar. This individual has proven himself to be untrustworthy and a liar. His only comment in his defence is he looked it over and decided to vote for it. As for the others, did any board member ask what the parents wanted? NO! They queried teachers and administrators to find out what they wanted. Personally I have an attorney that is looking into the lies to see if an impeachment process is possible. If not I will campaign hard and long to make sure that none are reelected.
Critcal Care Nurse
November 23rd, 2009
1:26 pm
Maureen: sorry, but it did come across clearly as “this is MY playground, get out!” As a prior teacher (yes, I did say that) I am unimpressed. Straightforward is one thing, childish is another. Is this a vent or a blog? Are visitors not supposed to bring up “the rest of the story”? I thought this was a forum for meaningful, respectful dialogue…seems I came to the wrong playground.
Save the Economy
November 23rd, 2009
1:27 pm
Anyone notice the whole summer vacation thing? There’s a reason why beaches, lakes and mountains are full of people in the summer- it remains the best time to use those resources. Cape Cod loses a lot of charm in October, and WhiteWater is a little chilly in February. Our vacation industry is a multi bazillion dollar industry, and things like the balanced calendar are going to choke it out at a time when a little boost is desperately needed. And for what? The balanced calendar doesn’t improve academics, and largely seems driven by folks who burn out (wimps- I’m a teacher and generally have perfect attendance) and those who want a leaf peeping week in September and a ski week in February. In the past summer was a time to harvest crops. Today we use it to harvest tourist dollars. As Cobb residents watch tourists driving past a shuttered Six Flags on their way to Florida (or South Carolina, etc…) with their dollars, at least their kids will get a valuable economics lesson- a lesson they won’t get from a job since their summer will be too brief to allow for one.
wolverine
November 23rd, 2009
1:57 pm
Badger,
Isn’t it clear that some teachers liked the balanced calendar and others didn’t, just as some parents like it but others don’t? You make it sound like the BOE pushed through that everyone was against. It is always the case that people who are unhappy speak louder than those who are, but maybe the board chairperson did indeed listen to parents and more parents liked the balanced calendar. Just because your circle doesn’t have many people who like the calendar does not mean that there are plenty who do.
Gwinnett HS Teacher
November 23rd, 2009
2:07 pm
Critical Care Nurse – I’m so sorry that you were offended. Most of the adults I deal with aren’t so sensitive, especially when opinions (not facts) are discussed. Additionally, this is not MY playground – it’s Maureen’s; and she said it’s okay for you to play here! (Smile – don’t get so defensive:)
Maureen Downey
November 23rd, 2009
2:12 pm
Critical Care Nurse, You are always welcome here. I think it is easy to read tone into online comments, which is why I never e-mail my editors anything important as I want my tone to be clear.
If I wasn’t clear, please stay. We appreciate your insights.
Maureen
Another Thought
November 23rd, 2009
2:12 pm
To Badger and others – I don’t think anyone who’s not a teacher fully understands what most of us mean by “break.” When school starts up in August, we hit the ground running and go zero to sixty in no time. To use Critical Care Nurse’s job as an analogy, it’s like coming back from a vacation to work back to back to back 12 hour shifts for 3 months straight – even weekends are busy. I look forward to my breaks because it means I can catch up on my work – isn’t that sad? And I’m not alone. I will have more free-time this week, but I will still be doing some work – many teachers will. With all the new paperwork supporting the Georgia Keys and standards-based education, RTI, and NCLB, grading often gets left by the wayside – breaks are the only time to catch up. We’re filling out paperwork to show that we’ve filled out paperwork – I wish I’d see people as up in arms over that as they are over the calendar. We often try to compare to Japan – while they may go more days, Japanese teachers actually teach LESS and have less paperwork.
For those of you who want to talk about “well, other jobs…blah blah blah…” – true, to an extent. Most folks who have professional jobs with hours like teachers and take home work get paid a lot more – even when figuring in time off (and truth be told, many of those folks have more time off than just two weeks). Those that don’t make as much as teachers rarely have the responsibility and rarely take home work with them. Their evenings and weekends are their own. There is also the infamous study that showed the average office worker wasted an average of 2 hours a day – I wish I had that time to waste.
FWIW, I would rather have a few more three day weekends rather than a full week – I could use one day to catch up on work, one to catch up with household chores, and one to relax. Right now, I don’t get that one to relax – my joke is that summer is my comp time for all my ruined weekends. Also FWIW, this is not my first career – I have served in the military and worked for both a large and small private company. For every pro in one work sector there is a corresponding con. None of us really have it good, unless we’re lottery winners.
Badger
November 23rd, 2009
2:21 pm
Wolverine, if you would have read the original posts and statements about how the vote came about you would know that : A) The board admitted to only querying teachers and admins. B) The vote itself was a complete suprise, without notifying the public at large that a discussion ( which never took place)or vote to take place. The vote was obviously discussed behind closed doors because they already knew the public was against it but the teachers and administrators were for it. All this was admitted by the board with the chairman making a statement that “yes he campaigned, saying he was against a balanced calendar but after looking at it he voted for it. This liar refused to answer anymore questions and stated in essence the calendar is set deal with it. So Wolverine its not my circle but a pursuit of the boards own agenda that has brought this about. I would suggest you actually research the facts before opening mouth and inserting foot.
Critcal Care Nurse
November 23rd, 2009
3:06 pm
Thanks, Maureen, I appreciate your efforts. I must point out, however that “see if you can get one of your colleagues to help you remove that chip from your shoulder.” was not mistakenly interpreted …it was very clear and unearned. And GHS’s “you’re just too sensitive thing”, is bogus. I expect adults to discuss things with a modicum of respect, with no name-calling or personal attacks…the same things I hold my kids to.
BecksMom
November 23rd, 2009
5:18 pm
Critical care nurse – I don’t know; it seems to me that you do seem to have a chip on your shoulder. Yes, I know that your job is demanding and all, but, nobody said that it wasn’t! I think I read that you used to be an educator – so, you should know that we all have EVERYONE breathing down our necks when their children can’t/won’t/refuse to learn. If one of your patients didn’t take your advice or didn’t take their medication, would you get blamed?
Tony
November 23rd, 2009
6:06 pm
ScienceTeacher – Please provide references to the works. A quick scan revealed several peer-reviewed journal articles related to block scheduling and student achievement. Of the 10 that I looked at, half indicated modest gains in achievement for most subjects when 4×4 blocks are used. The other half indicated no differences in achievement. However, in reviewing the literature there is no overwhelming indication that block scheduling has an impact – either positive or negative – on student achievement. This is why I put it in the same category as the other emotional, no-win battles.
April
November 23rd, 2009
6:14 pm
Daycare expenses increase significantly for teachers on the balanced calendar. When my kids were little, I could withdraw them for the summer and only begin paying again when preplanning started. With a balanced calendar, the daycare providers will not let you skip payment on the weeks that school is not in session – no matter how far in advance you tell them. I have always had to pay for the week of Thanksgiving and spring break and the two weeks of Christmas – even though I was not working and chose to spend that time with my child instead of sending him to day care anyway. The same applied when my system went to a balanced calendar. I had the same experience at three different daycare centers.
wolverines
November 23rd, 2009
6:32 pm
Badger,
I thought Maureen had a blog about the “upcoming” vote on the calendar – so I can’t imagine the vote was “a complete surprise.”
irisheyes
November 23rd, 2009
10:26 pm
UGH. I get so tired of this. As soon as a teacher says that they have a difficult job, someone has to jump in with the “Well, you may think your job is hard, but in MY job, I have to. . .” I don’t think teachers think they have the hardest jobs in the world (that would be a little hard to quantify), but our jobs ARE hard, and they get harder everyday. Why do you think there is so much burnout?
Critical Care Nurse, you said you were an educator. I’m curious as to why you left education to go into nursing. More money? Shorter work weeks? More prestige? More control over your income and future? What were your reasons?
Personally, I like a more year round system. One school system near me in where I used to live had a calendar that was basically nine weeks on, three weeks off. For the first week of every three week break, they had “summer school”. The kids who had struggled that nine weeks could come in for an extra week of remediation. I thought it was a good plan because it caught those kids who were having trouble before they had lost a whole school year being lost and confused. Teachers could volunteer to teach those weeks and get paid like they would for summer school. It worked out so that they had about 4 – 5 weeks of summer vacation.
irisheyes
November 23rd, 2009
10:27 pm
ANNND, it looks like I got caught in the filter!
Maureen Downey
November 23rd, 2009
10:31 pm
irisheyes, You are out of the filter.
Maureen
irisheyes
November 23rd, 2009
10:35 pm
Maureen, I think we need to discuss how many “after hours” you work. You always seem to be posting or freeing us from the filter any time of day. Thanks!
Maureen Downey
November 23rd, 2009
10:49 pm
irisheyes, I am online fairly regularly until about 11, but the late-night posters – folks who somehow have energy to think and write at 1 a.m. – have to wait until the morning to get sprung.
I would love to figure out how to keep people out of the filter in the first place as many legitimate comments end up there, but it’s not an AJC program so we don’t control the spam parameters.
See you all tomorrow.
Maureen
Warrior Woman
November 23rd, 2009
11:37 pm
@ Reality2 – If you don’t see how a balanced calendar increases childcare costs, you haven’t been paying childcare recently. Daycare providers and “camps” (in the childcare sense, not the summer camp sense) typically charge a registration fee for each session. More sessions means more fees. In addition, as April noted, many care providers require you to pay even for break weeks you don’t attend, so having to pay for more weeks is the reality.
For my family, this is irrelevant, because my kids don’t go to daycare. I’m far more concerned that the balanced calendar reduces opportunities for non-school learning. Summer jobs will be harder to obtain, intensive learning camps are harder to fit in, as are mission trips, summer camps, etc.
The adoption of the balanced calendar is catering to the lowest common denominator – attempting to reduce gaps by dragging top performers down instead of bringing bottom performers up. This helps no one.
The balanced calendar is not proven to have academic benefits, costs both families (child care costs and summer job income foregone) and school systems more (think heating and cooling costs), increases smog (more buses in hot weather), and harms extracurricular learning. It was adopted without opportunity for meaningful public debate using an input format that was designed to weight school employee input far more heavily than parent input. It was adopted by elected officials that pledged to oppose it – a clear ethical violation.
@ irisheyes – If so many teachers didn’t complain about how hard their jobs are, fewer people would push back on the topic. Most jobs are hard and harder in the current environment. Teaching is nothing special in this regard. As a former teacher (HS and college), I know I work harder and longer hours than I ever did teaching full-time, with an equivalent stress level. Only the source of the stress has changed – I now have more management support than I did when teaching.
ScienceTeacher671
November 24th, 2009
8:23 am
Don’t you think that if the forum addressed another subject, you’d have another type of employee talking about the things that make their jobs difficult?
Philosopher
November 24th, 2009
8:45 am
There is nothing wrong with talking all day and all night about how hard your job is. I have seen noone refuting of the fact that you work hard.
But…when you use “we work so hard” and “we are so tired”as a basis to add “rest breaks”, and these “rest breaks” cause HUGE financial burdens and stress unequally on the people affected, you are fair game for that argument being called into account. As there have been no other reasons, valid or otherwise, brought to the table, you need to address these concerns intead of attacking the people negatively affected….without doing that, you lose credibility.
Reality 2
November 24th, 2009
8:50 am
Warrior Woman,
Yes, you are right – my kids are now teen agers, so they can more or less take care of themselves at home. But, I don’t think all childcare providers or summer camps work like the way you describe it. Unless the “registration fees” for those break weeks are higher than what they would usually charge during the summer weeks, I don’t see how that adds to the total cost.
Although I agree with Maureen that presenting ANY calendar as a way to boost academic achievement is bogus, at the same time I don’t buy your arguement that this balanced calendar will reduce the opportunities. All of those providers will adjust their calendar – after all, they can’t run their programs without students, and if they are private entities, they probably want to make money. So, the argument about reduced learning opportunities is also bogus.
People say that there is no evidence that a balanced calendar will improve academic achievement and they are absolutely correct. However, there is no research evidence that the traditional calendar does any better – given the current state of our schools, it isn’t unreasonable to think that the traditional calendar hasn’t really done much to support students’ achievements, either.
Either way, what need to change to improve achievement is actually what happens when students are in classrooms,regardless of a calendar a school system adopts.
As for the cost, I don’t necessarily see how it will cost schools more money. If you take a week off, then you don’t heat/cool the building those weeks nor run school buses. How does the weather in September or February compare to the weather in late May? I can’t see them that different. So, that argument is also bogus.
The only argument I can somewhat buy is whether or not there was enough public, including teachers and parents, inputs. The BOE makes many decisions at their meetings. Each meeting includes time for public comments, and the agenda for the meetings are always published ahead of time. For many decisions, that seems to be plenty. Why should this decision be different? I’m not sure.
ScienceTeacher671
November 24th, 2009
9:17 am
@Tony, there is quite a bit of contradictory research on block scheduling, and many of the studies have significant flaws. That said, the GaDOE has done studies (none recently that I can find) and almost all showed that schools on regular schedules outperformed those on block schedules on both the SAT and Georgia-specific tests. Gruber & Onwuegbuzie had similar findings. The Bateson studies in Canada are well-known. The College Board found that students on regular schedules had significantly higher AP exam scores than students on block schedules, and a study in the midwest found that students on regular schedules had significantly higher ACT scores.
Maureen Downey
November 24th, 2009
9:36 am
ScienceTeacher, DOE was supposed to follow up on that original SAT study and never did.
Maureen
ScienceTeacher671
November 24th, 2009
9:38 am
Philosopher, I don’t live in the district, so I don’t really “have a dog in the fight” so to speak. Personally, I’d prefer such a schedule not because “I work so hard” or “I need a break” or “I’m so tired”, but because I prefer to take vacations in fall when it’s cooler and not so crowded, rather than in summer when it’s hot. Also, as I’ve already said, when I was not teaching and was using daycare, the costs overall would have been the same. Things may be different now.
ScienceTeacher671
November 24th, 2009
9:40 am
Maureen, some of DOE’s older reports say they are supposed to do an annual report on block scheduling & student achievement, but the most recent one I can find is about 4 years ago.
Maureen Downey
November 24th, 2009
9:47 am
ScienceTeacher, That’s the last one. I used to bug Dana about it, but he said they just didn’t do any others. (I am interested in block as my system has it and I don’t think it works well. I also interviewed the UVA and Harvard researchers who looked at how teachers adapted to block – they found few did anything differently in the expanded time. I remain leery of it, especially in terms of AP classes that kids take in the fall but don’t get tested on until the late spring.
I would certainly advise any kids in block high schools to take their APs in the spring so they are in the class actively learning the material when they take the AP test.
Maureen
ScienceTeacher671
November 24th, 2009
10:43 am
Maureen, I’d love to know why they didn’t do any others. Many of the schools in our area switched back from block to regular schedule when their test scores dropped & didn’t rebound enough.
I admit that in many ways, block scheduling works better for teachers (love having more time for labs, LOVE the longer planning period!), but I don’t think it works as well for most students in most subjects. The problem with AP is that in some schools, the classes are only offered in fall semester.
Notice that in the DOE study of EOCTs, Algebra I was the one subject that looked better under block. I know of at least one system that required students to take Algebra I as a full-year course under block, which gave those students 50% more time in class instead of 25% less time…if other systems did the same, could have influenced the results.
luvs2teach
November 24th, 2009
10:47 am
Warrior Woman – I find your comment about working harder now interesting, because my experience has been the opposite. I was in the Marine Corps (when there was no war going on) and then pharmaceutical sales, and I work harder now than I ever did – even when we had field ops. Of course maybe it’s that whole Marine Corps concept of giving 110% – who knows.
My kids are older, and so like others, I don’t have a dog in this fight. I am contracted to work 190 (+/- this year, as we all know) days. I don’t care when they are – breaks are nice, but they have a downside, too – specially ’squirreliness’ in the days prior. Someone’s point about daycare charging whether you go or not is dead-on though, so this will actually cost some teachers more money (they have to pay for daycare even though their kids aren’t attending that week to keep their spot).
In all honesty though, I don’t understand the attachment to a calendar that exists for an agricultural way of life that really no longer exists. I would rather see a month off in the summer (like Europe) and a month off in the winter (Thanksgiving to New Year’s is a wash, anyway) – but no one is asking me, lol.
high school teacher
November 24th, 2009
5:06 pm
luvs2teach, I am with you! BTW, when mine were little in daycare, we still had to pay 1/2 tuition in the summers to reserve their spot. Does anyone else have to do this?
pay attention folks
November 24th, 2009
5:44 pm
Maureen and Science Teacher,
My guess is that the DOE stopped studying whether or not block was effective when they increased the graduation requirements. ALL students(effective with the class of 2012) now need four units of math and science, and 24 credits in all to graduate. Block certainly offers more “wiggle room” to meet these requirements.
ScienceTeacher671
November 24th, 2009
8:27 pm
pay attention folks, that’s a good point, especially since students who don’t graduate on time are considered dropouts under NCLB. On the other hand, since NCLB is all about test scores, it seems that anything that reduces test scores would be discouraged.
pay attention folks
November 24th, 2009
8:46 pm
I suspect we’ll see the state legislature try again this winter to override the state DOE and return to a three tierd diploma system (legislation was proposed last year, but died in committee). If Ga adjusts graduation requirements perhaps block will lose some appeal.
Can anyone tell me how many credits per year stuents on a tradional high school schedule earn in a year(i’m thinking 6-7)? Students on block earn 8 per year.
ScienceTeacher671
November 24th, 2009
8:49 pm
Before we went to block, students earned 6 credits per year, but some of the advanced students got an Algebra I credit in 8th grade…back when we still had Algebra I….
pay attention folks
November 24th, 2009
8:59 pm
OK….that explains a lot. 6 credits x 4 years = 24 credits. EXACTLY the number needed to graduate with the class 2012 and beyond…
I’ve looked at other states-high performing ones at that, and they are requiring more in the neighborhood of 22 credits to graduate.
More does not equal better.
ScienceTeacher671
November 24th, 2009
9:26 pm
“Back in the day” we needed 21 credits…
I’m hoping they’ll go back to the tiered diploma system. Even better would be allowing students to earn more vocational certificates in high school, instead of post high school. All students don’t want or need to go to college, but all ought to graduate with some viable skills.
And more does not equal better, especially when it’s been watered down and dumbed down and one only needs to get 45% correct to pass the EOCT.
E. Streets
November 30th, 2009
11:30 am
Those for “balanced calender” or year round calender(simply called balanced to decieve the general public)can quote research in their behalf. There is just as much out there to disprove the theories. This has been attempted over and over from California to New Jersey since at least 1950’s. Who benefits from the balanced calender? The teachers! Who wouldn’t love a work schedule that allows a couple of weeks off every 8-9 weeks.( off WITH your kids) a neat family plan, if you are teachers!! If you are part of the general working, tax paying, voting, other 99% you are challenged with child care issues everytime you turn around. Not too mention not enough time in the summer to acheive a decent family vacation or unwind from the continuous and increaseing stress of keeping your kids abreast of everything school requires. When us 30 – to 50 year olds were in school, we began in September, a quick Christmas break, along weekend in the spring and we were out by Memorial Day. I’ll bet our performance was numbers ahead of kids today. I also beleive there is research to show that a shorter year(even by a month) would decrease our school cost, oddly enough this is never mentioned. But as you mentioned before It is also about the UNDERperformers. We must provide meals and care for the nonperforming percentage, at the cost of the whole. The home life, education system and pocketbook of the working parent again the victim.