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Judging by the way the question has been answered by other respondents, not everyone understands how a year round calender works in most school districts. Financial considerations actually prohibit school districts from adding school days. What most school districts do, however, is establish a schedule that better distributes the school days throughout a year, rather than having two to three months without instruction. What happens is that students have three weeks off at the traditional times - Christmas, Spring Break - and an additional three weeks in the fall. The summer vacation is reduced to six weeks.

The justification for the year round calendar is based on the significant changes in education over the past several decades. The long summer is a throw back to the nation's agricultural roots when children were needed for the planting, harvest and other chores on the farm. We have since evolved into an industrial society and further into a service society, so the agricultural model no longer applies.

In the meantime, educators are faced with increased accountability. They have more to teach and less time in which to teach it. Each week that students are out of school for the summer reduces their memory for what they learned at the end of the previous school year. Teachers then must spend the first month reteaching what was taught before so they can build on those ideas with new lessons. Extensive reteaching actually wastes valuable time. This can be crucial in states where high-stakes testing takes places early in the school year.

Spreading out the breaks also gives schools an opportunity to offer remediation for students who need it. Under the traditional model, students can't get remediation until summer school. The problem is if they didn't understand what they were to learn in the fall, they have lost an entire year because they won't have the foundation on which to build the learning for the remainder of the year. With year round education, schools often have the option of offering a week or two remediation for students who need it. In that instance, it's possible to help a child catch up before his regular classmates return.

There are a couple of disadvantages - one psychological and one logistical. Psychologically, we've all become incredibly used to the idea of a long summer vacation. But there are still six weeks in which to plan recreation. And this allows parents to spread out their vacations and lends a little more flexibility. For instance, in airlines often drop their rates in the fall. With three weeks around which a vacation can be planned, year round school can be advantageous.

On the psychological front, year round school also may appear at first blush to be inconvenient to families of divorce where a non-custodial parent - especially one far away - may feel shortchanged. However, this really is an opportunity. Instead of a couple of months in the summer, the visitation schedule, provided parents are reasonable, allows for quality time to be spread more equitably throughout the year.

The logistical problem, however, is for working parents of younger students. Camps usually are available only for the periods when they would be used by the majority. In the summertime, this isn't a problem. But most schools don't have a real fall break and certainly not one that takes place over three weeks. Sometimes one-week winter and spring camps are available, but this can be tricky for the remaining weeks.

Learn more about this author, Rebecca Bibbs.
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