Right now, discard everything you have been told about why a school calendar is nine months long. Forget being told that the school calendar is matched to an agrarian lifestyle when children were needed as farm labor in the summer months. Hooey! Whatever reasoning was used in the 1800s to set the length of the school year needs to remain in the 1800s. The real reason for a nine month school year is understood using the words of “Deep Throat” in All The President’s Men. “Follow the money!”
The nation’s school children no longer are needed to labor during the summer months on the family farm. The 2013-14 school year was nine months in length because that is as much school as state governments, school boards and taxpayers are willing to fund. Changing something that is as fixed in our culture as a nine month school year and a three month summer vacation is not only difficult to conceptualize, it is difficult to fund. A calendar that is any longer than nine months requires a significant increase in tax revenue. For example, if the annual school budget is $10,000,000, adding one additional month would require approximately a one-ninth or 11% increase in the annual school budget. An additional $1,111,000 for one month of school is a hard sell for state legislators and school board members who want to cut costs not increase them. We probably shouldn’t think about a year round school calendar requiring a 30 percent increase in school costs. $3,333,000! Hence, the 2013-14 school year started around Labor Day and ended shortly after Memorial Day. And, the 2013-14 school budgets, spent or encumbered, were just about zeroed out at the end of the school year. This it has been each school year across the distant past and may well be for the foreseeable future.
More school year requires more money. Time is money.
It is interesting that when student academic achievement is criticized as falling short of the national and state political and economic interests, time is non-negotiable. Children must learn in 180 days or fail. The current scheme looks like this.
Every child must achieve one grade level’s growth in reading and mathematics or successfully complete specific course outcomes by the end of 180 school days. The teaching resources are provided within the approved budget. You have nine months. Go. And, at the end of nine months the clock stops and the budget will have been spent. But, child achievement will be spread along a continuum ranging from “not close” to “almost” to “just made it” to “successfully completed in April or May.”
In a better educational world, educational outcomes would be fixed and time and resources would be the variables of interest. The scheme could look like this.
We will start educating all children on the first Monday in September. Most children will need approximately nine months to complete the stated educational outcomes. Some children will require more time. We need all children to be ready for the next set of annual outcomes by this time next year; education for those outcomes will begin next September. Use as much of this calendar year as is required for all children to achieve this year’s outcomes. Use adequate educational resources to assure that all children learn.
The school calendar should be flexible to assure enough time for all children to achieve their annual educational outcomes. There is no reason why June, July and August are not available for the continued education of children whose achievement is not yet secure in June. Additional time would be required only for children who need additional time. It is probable that the long term cost of underachieving high school graduates over their adult life span is much greater than the cost of funding annual achievement for all children now.