My first introduction to year-round school calendars was through my sister-in-law’s family in Wake County, N.C. Concluding that it made no sense to let schools sit vacant for three summer months out of the year, school officials in the fast-growing county outside Raleigh eked out extra capacity by dividing the long summer break into shorter “intersessions” and rotating students through the year at different intervals. Based upon my casual conversations with her, my sister-in-law seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement. I always wondered why Virginia didn’t try something similar — especially in counties that couldn’t build schools fast enough to keep up with population growth.
It turns out that Virginia has been experimenting with year-round schools. Nine elementary schools — located in Arlington County, Alexandria, Danville, Lynchburg and Richmond — were operating in the 2011-2012 school year. Now the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) has issued a report summarizing what has been learned. The main conclusions:
- Annual school expenditures actually increase modestly, by about three percent.
- Overall, Standard of Learning (SOL) test scores were similar for year-round and traditional calendar schools.
- However, SOL scores for black students, and to a lesser extent Hispanic, disadvantaged and limited English proficiency students, were more likely to exceed predicted 2009 SOL test scores.
- School districts with large percentages of black students might consider the trade-off of higher expense for improved test scores to be worthwhile.
What accounts for the improvement? States the report:
A distinguishing feature of the year-round schools in Virginia is intersessions. Intersessions can provide remedial and enrichment opportunities for students…. Students likely benefit from the reinforcement of recently learned concepts during intersessions, and this positive effect is particularly true for students requiring remediation. Timely and targeted intersession remediation can help those students avoid accumulated learning loss, which is especially important for subjects, such as math, that require students to master core concepts before they can move to new material. Intersessions and shorter summer breaks may also be particularly helpful for students that have few educational opportunities outside of school.
What accounts for the higher cost? The expense of providing teaching during the intersessions. Note: JLARC did not factor in increased transportation and food service costs.
Bacon’s bottom line: One of the few advantages of a school system like Virginia’s with so much power vested in the state administration is the ability to conduct tests like this to learn what works. It looks like useful knowledge has been learned. Let’s hope local school systems take appropriate advantage of it.
— JAB