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The Benefits of Year Round Education and Extended School Days

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Year round education (YRE) is implemented in 436 U.S. school districts with very few complaints. In fact, school districts that have been participating in YRE and extended school days (ESD) are raving about the benefits in pupil's achievement level, their new found enthusiasm in learning, as well as the many programs that exist in the extended day promoting the decline in latch key children.
Some schools decided to initiate YRE and ESD because of swelling enrollments and lack of student achievement. There were many issues raised when deciding if YRE and ESD were a step in the right direction. For one, we are all creatures of habit, and to implement a new school schedule would mean extensive changes. Second, …show more content…

By keeping the child in school on a year round schedule or ESD students will be less likely to loose information due to a long summer recess and have more time in a learning environment, therefore, enriching the child's learning abilities.
There are different types of YRE and ESD schedules. The most popular schedule is single-track and is usually implemented for the purpose of academic improvements. On a single-track schedule children attend school year round with frequent intersessions or breaks. Typical schedules might be 90-30, 60-20, or 45-15 where the first number indicates days of instruction and the second, days of vacations (Opheim, Mohahjer, Read, 1996). There is also a multi-track schedule, which is known to be more cost efficient. This schedule is often implemented when the school is overcrowded, in poor neighborhoods, as well as in inner-city schools. On a multi-track schedule students schedules are consistent with the single-track 90-30, 60-20, or 45-15, however, students are assigned to one of the several tracks which are staggered therefore, no one group of students has the same intersession at the same time. By staggering attendance schedules, class size is deducted. Studies have concluded that decreased class size promotes more efficient learning.

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