The School Year has ended....for real this time.

Tomorrow is my last day of work for the 2010/2011 school year. For many teachers like me summer break is beginning and they can rest, recharge their batteries, and reflect on what happened over the past school year.  In my division we have nine weeks before we are back to start a new year.

Yesterday, I talked about the awkward time period at the end of the school year.  Today, I want to explore the issue of our school calendar at a broader level.  The approximately 180 days of schooling that takes place in most states is a product of a time when most people worked on farms.  Does it make sense to keep that same calendar into today's society? 

Let me propose an alternative.  What if public schools moved to fill more of the full year calendar, spreading the 9 weeks of summer vacation out over the course of the calendar year.   

First, it cuts down on the summer brain drain problem.  For some kids summer is a time where they forget what they learned.  When they get back in the fall, they have to relearn information to catch up.  From what I have read this problem tends to effect more students who are economically disadvantaged.  So spreading schooling out over more of the year would help to eliminate this problem in education.  

Second, I think it would help to balance the teacher workload.  Teachers put in a ton of time, effort, and energy over the course of the school year and really do need some time in the summer to recover.  I don't know if they actually need nine weeks for recovery.  By spreading out the school year and creating smaller chunks of vacation, like three three week breaks and two one week breaks, you could help teachers still get the rest they need while maintaining a fairly consistent school year.  

Third, it would require schools to rethink how they organize their classes.  You wouldn't want a class interrupted by a three week break so you would have to create smaller lengths of time for classes.  Instead of 180 or 90 days, you might have 60 days of class.  That would help to keep courses in more manageable chunks for teachers to plan and execute.  I also think it would help kids focus on content more, since material would need to be more evenly spaced.

What do you think about this idea?  I am not sure how I feel about it, but I figured I could propose something to get the conversation started.  Post a comment and tell me how you would like to design the school year.  

Schools out for the....WHAT you mean it really ended two weeks ago!

A friend shared an op-ed from one of the local papers that argues Virginia does a disservice to its students by requiring them to remain in school even after the Standard of Learning (SOL) tests are over in early June.  The op-ed says the testing must be completed by then because of Federal rules.  I don't know if that is true, but I do know that testing always takes place in late May.  Here in Virginia students are required to be in school for 180 days, but they cannot begin school before Labor Day in order to supposedly protect our tourism industry.  Thus this creates a situation where teachers have two to three weeks of time left to fill and the actual amount of time to prepare for the SOLs is around 170 days.  The easy solution to this is to adjust one of the two dates, either the Labor Day law or the SOL testing window.  So far neither of those has happened.  If my memory serves me correctly, a bill to remove the Labor Day barrier was defeated in our General Assembly. 

This issue creates an awkward period of time for teachers.  Students are bright enough to know that they aren't really responsible for what is being taught in the same way they are before the SOL tests.  Some teachers use this time to try and do creative lessons that don't fit with the SOLs.  Some try to get students to explore areas they are curious about.  Other teachers don't do much of anything, showing a lot of videos so they can catch up on grading.  To me it is wasted time.  We are not being efficient.  Why keep the students at this point?

So what should give?  The post Labor Day start time or the SOL testing window?  What do you think?     
  

Homework: Do you Love it or Hate it?

I saw this New York times article today on homework.  The article looks at the debate around homework as some school divisions look to ban or restrict homework.  The school system featured in the article will vote to put in place rules that limit homework to ten minutes times the grade level of the student.  So a third grade student would have thirty minutes of homework and a twelfth grade student would have two hours of homework a night.  I am not sure what K X 10 equals for a kindergarten student.

The question I have is this something that school boards should be making rules about?  Doesn't that seem a little extreme?  It would take away a teacher's ability to provide the right amount of additional practice for a student.  How do you judge what thirty minutes of homework is when students work at different rates and speeds?

I did like the idea of having certain nights be homework free.  I also liked the idea of having breaks be homework free, but I would like to know what my AP teaching friends feel about that idea.  The idea of goal work was interesting and I would love to see that get tied into something similar to what the Khan academy is doing with math.     

I know last year I was lucky to have 40 percent of my students turn in homework on a regular basis.  They didn't really care about it.  That might of had something to do with me being a first year teacher though.....

I was taught at Education School that you want students to have three points of contact with a certain topic or subject in a 24 to 36 hour period.  For me, that meant in class, at home with homework, and then as a review the next day in class.  I always saw homework as something where you could get a little more practice with the concept we learned in class.  Very rarely did I give extensive homework assignments to those eighth grade students.     

So where does that leave homework?  In or out?  Love it or hate?  Let me know by adding a comment.

History Sacrificed on Altar of Math and Reading

The National Association of Education Progress (NAEP) released the history testing information today.  As a history lover and teacher it made me sad.  For those not associated with the education world, NAEP provides some of the best data for analyzing school performance because of the way they go about testing.  Some highlights from the eighth grade results:

• Only 17 percent of eighth grade students scored at or above the proficient level
• 31 percent of eighth grade students scored below basic 
• Interestingly, males did slightly better at the extremes than females.  That is a greater percentage of females scored below basic and a greater percentage of males scored proficient or better.  The differences between the genders were only a few percentage points. 
• Not surprisingly, family income was a strong predictor of scores.  Fifty percent of free lunch students scored below basic while only 19 percent of those students not eligible for free lunch scored below basic.     
• I can not back this statement up from the NAEP data, but NBC News commented tonight that the reason for these disappointing numbers is that reading and math get ten times as much instructional time as history does.  

 Curious how you would do?  You can take some sample questions at all three tested grade levels.

What do you think about the results?  I appreciate that you took time to read my post.     
 

Are Schools a Business or Government?

Our society is stuck between wanting our schools to be businesses and wanting our schools to be government.  I am not sure we can have it both ways.

How do we change governments that we don't like in the United States?  We vote for someone else to run the government.  If enough people don't like the way the government is running then we get new government leaders.   

How do we change private business that we don't like in the United States?  We don't give them our business.    If enough people don't like the business then it goes out of business.

Right now our public schools follow the government model via school boards.  I feel like more people want them to be like the business model.  How do you make that happen though?  How do you make schools a business when the bottom line is not revenue and profits, but people and learning?

What are your thoughts on this subject?