Shaw 1

Max Shaw

Mrs. Cramer

Comp Pd. 2

14 April 2022

Summer Break Vs. Year-Round School

For more than one hundred years, the school calendar has remained mostly the same,

with school being from late august to early June with a long break for the summer. While it may

not be perfect, it has worked well enough for children from generations and generations. Some

schools across the country have adapted to a new schedule, with year-round school with

dispersed breaks. While in terms of logistics this may be effective, it is not as effective in other

ways. The traditional calendar with summer break should stay because it provides a much-

needed break for students and administrators and provides the ability for summer sports teams

and camps.

Summer break is important because it provides a much-needed relaxation period for

students and administrators. “For example, one administrator related that she had been a year-

round elementary principal for three and a half years prior to moving to the district office. Now,

her highest concern with the year-round program is with administrator burnout. When she was a

year-round principal, her longest vacation was just two weeks.” (Wildman et al.) This shows that

during the year-round school calendar, the administrators get essentially no time off. This would

be pretty problematic because if the administrators of the school have no time off to look forward

to or to unwind with, they will not be nearly as productive and they will likely just be going
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through the motions. This leaves the administration without the critical opportunity for self-

assessment and planning for the future of the school. Therefore, the school seems to suffer

greatly because the administrators have no desire or time to improve themselves or the school.

Similarly, the students will go through the same actions, just going through the motions because

they have nothing to actually look forward to or work towards, and this further hurts the school

and everyone in it.

One argument against summer vacation is that students forget everything they learn over

the summer and go back to school in the fall unprepared, and that is why the number of schools

that have to start the year with review have to do that. It is argued that this makes the summer

break not effective and non-beneficial to the students in the long run. “I mean that school should

be a place where people learn about the exercise of power in our society and begin to find a place

within the structures that support it. Do shorter breaks improve retention of information?

Probably. Is that synonymous with learning? Not always.” (Powell) This shows that going to

school in the fall is not all about retaining everything they’ve learned from the past year, it is

about learning and figuring out what a person enjoys in school, as to better themselves for the

future. It also shows that even with the longer break, not only do people not always lose a portion

of the learning that they did, but it also shows that this has little correlation with the actual ability

to learn and how well they will do in school. It is also argued that summer break isn’t good for

the students in the long run, and this example shows the opposite. When analyzed, it shows that

the students’ learning isn’t hurt, and it has no real effect on how students go back in the fall and

learn.

Lastly, the long summer break helps sports teams and summer camps plan around the

summer in order to have it at the right times. Without summer break, these sports teams and
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camps would either not be able to exist, or just not be able to have kids from those school

districts at their activities. “With most schools on a nine-month schedule, extracurricular

activities have learned to plan their programs accordingly. Therefore, students at a year-round

school may not have availability to experience certain outside activities like summer sports

teams or camps” (McGuire). This example shows that without summer vacation, the students

would not be able to experience those activities, which can be key to children in developing

relationships and social skills. With summer vacation, they would be able to go to these camps

and sports teams and develop new interests outside of school and develop social skills. Not only

this, but the camps and sports teams would most likely not be able to stay in business or have to

just fold because they would have substantially less kids to play the sports and attend the camps.

This would obviously be bad for not only the kids that lose out on the opportunity to develop

new skills and friends, but also for the businesses and owners of the camps and sports teams that

lose out on the business that those kids provide.

In conclusion, summer vacation is a necessity for children and teens around the nation

and the world. Some schools have decided to adapt to a new system with year-round school with

more small, dispersed breaks. While the current system may not be perfect, it has worked for

generations upon generations. The system that some are suggesting may be better than the

current system in terms of logistics, but in just about every other way, the current system is

better. This is because the current system of summer vacation gives students and administrators

a much-needed break, and it provides the ability for summer camps and summer sports teams.
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Works Cited

McGuire, Brooke. "The Pros & Cons of Year-Round School." American College of Education,

17 July 2019, www.ace.edu/blog/post/2019/07/17/the-pros-cons-of-year-round-school.

Powell, Dave. "In Praise of Summer Vacation." EducationWeek, 10 July 2016,

www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-in-praise-of-summer-vacation/2016/07.

Wildman, Louis, et al. "The Effect of Year-round Schooling on Administrators." Education, vol.

119, no. 3, spring 1999, p. 465. Gale in Context: Opposing Viewpoints,

link.gale.com/apps/doc/A54709073/OVIC?u=pl1949&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=17e4a127.

Accessed 23 Mar. 2022.