Summertime blues: Kids may grumble, but a longer school year can help stop learning loss | Opinion

Mention year-round school and it conjures up nightmares of kids slogging through work while outside the sun shines, water parks are refreshingly cool and theme parks are humming.

But there are some upsides: According to the University of Texas at Arlington, adding school days to the summer calendar could help students retain more of what they learn, save money on staff resources and prevent student and teacher burnout.

It’s being tested here in the Fort Worth area, with some success. David L. Walker Elementary in Crowley Independent School District shortened its summer break by adding 30 days to its school calendar. Now, more students are on grade level on the Texas STAAR tests, especially compared to four years ago, when Walker was the lowest-rated campus in the district.

Last year the school, which is in the city of Fort Worth, was ranked No. 1. School district leaders attribute at least some of that success to a school year that forgoes long summer breaks.

Should other Fort Worth-area districts and schools consider cutting off a long summer break?

The proposition has potential to address a stuck educational philosophy that has long needed to be disrupted and the educational and logistical nightmares that 10-12 week summers cause parents and students. More districts should consider calendar changes, and while shortening summer might not make sense across the board, it’s a promising tool to shake up struggling schools.

This Editorial Board has grown increasingly alarmed that the public school system in Texas is failing broadly and needs an intervention, if not an overhaul. One of the issues school districts, and especially teachers, face is significant learning loss from three-month summers. The Texas Education Agency estimated in 2021 that the standard summer slide accounts to about 2.5 months of learning loss. Add to that the 3.2 months of loss due to the pandemic, and the problem is clear: Students are behind and need to catch up.

Year-round school would almost surely eliminate the dreaded learning loss curve. It could also eliminate a few other important factors, some directly related to kids’ learning, some not.

One of the biggest issues shortening summer could resolve is parents’ logistical nightmares. Unfortunately, teaching jobs aside, most parents don’t have a full summer off from their jobs. Sure, they can take a vacation, but 10 weeks? For parents of kids in elementary and even middle schools, their children are too young to stay home alone. They need childcare in the form of a babysitter, camps or a community program.

The cost of any of these is enormous and often stresses parents out. Teenagers can watch themselves, but they’re more likely to be bored and spend way too much time on their phones. This isn’t to say school should be set up primarily as a babysitting system, but better aligning school calendars with the needs of working parents would be an added benefit.

Kids might, at first, balk at such a proposition. But cutting summer down to one month might utilize the coolest part of a Texas summer while also allowing kids to remain productive. At least with school in session longer they remain in a routine with their friends, and most importantly, they receive education with less of the learning loss that accompanies the start of every school year.

Some statistics show kids with more school days don’t actually do much better than kids with less, especially if you compare them to tiny, mostly homogeneous countries like Finland, which boasts one of the highest ranking school systems in the world. It’s hard to say exactly why this is, but the Finns definitely have the “less is more” attitude — older kids get 15 minutes between classes and an hour for lunch, and elementary kids get a whopping 75-minute recess — and they do extraordinarily well.

In that spirit, it might be interesting to see what would happen if more districts went year-round but added regular week-long breaks every six weeks, plus just more “down” time in the day for kids.

Either way, David L. Walker’s experience is unique and encouraging. It’s an example of the mindset that we don’t have to do things the way they’ve always been done, especially if they’re no longer working.