For or Against: Year-Round School

They don’t call ’em the lazy days of summer for nothing. July is built for vacations and ice cream cones. Even students from the eight Cleveland Metropolitan School District high schools that have year-round calendars get this month off. But while you’re attempting to avoid thinking too hard about any weighty topics, we asked two national education experts about the pros and cons behind all-year school.

 FOR //  Students often have trouble retaining things they’ve learned after summer break and must be re-taught for up to 40 days, says David Hornak, National Association for Year-Round Education executive director and schools superintendent in Holt, Michigan. Year-round school cuts down on summer learning loss without increasing the required 180 school days. The frequent breaks relax both kids and teachers, he says, which is a boon for learning. “Rather than a sprint from the first day of school to the last day of school with a few breaks in there, it’s more like a marathon,” says Hornak.

AGAINST //  After Wake County in North Carolina adopted year-round school in 2007, Katy Rouse studied the effects of the new model, which were published in the American Economic Journal in 2012. The Elon University associate professor of economics’ research found that Wake County’s system of just moving around days of school, like Cleveland’s, had little to no effect on students’ grades, good or bad. “The implication is that it doesn’t really matter how you distribute the school days,” says Rouse. “It’s the number of days that seems to matter.”