Posted on

Year-Round Schooling: Everything You Need to Know

In the year-round schooling method, K-12 students in the United States go to school all around the year while having a couple of breaks during the year. This schooling system can either be single-track (ST) with unified attendance or multi-track (MT) with staggered attendance plans. Schools can also choose to combine both tracks in their approach to year-round schooling.  While for the single-track method, both staff and students follow the same calendar, while in the multi-track method, staff and students don’t have to follow the same calendar. Instead, they are separated into staggered instructional blocks and break schedules.  Furthermore, single-track …

Continue reading “Year-Round Schooling: Everything You Need to Know”

Posted on

A Guide to Age Equivalent Test Scores

Also known as mental age or test age, age equivalent test scores have been hotly debated upon by educators and psychologists. What does it mean, and what happens if a child’s score does not match his or her actual age? The Difficulty of Establishing Criteria Children that are born within a given six-month period are put in one group. A sample of test scores from each group will be chosen to represent this age group. The age equivalent score is determined by taking the mean test score of the group and using that as the point of comparison for each …

Continue reading “A Guide to Age Equivalent Test Scores”

Posted on

How to Implement a Year Round Schooling System

Do you feel year-round schools would be a good choice for your district? The article that follows offers information on how to transition to a year-round school format, if you choose to go that route. First, you need to decide what type of year-round school scheduling system you will use. Year-round schools are usually set up as single-track (ST) with unified attendance or multi-track (MT) with staggered attendance programs. Some schools use a combination of the two. The main difference between the two systems is that single-track allows the entire student and staff population to adhere to the same calendar, …

Continue reading “How to Implement a Year Round Schooling System”

Posted on

Jumpstarting Learning for Children Living in Poverty

Contrary to popular belief, DNA is not a child’s destiny. IQ is not fixed. Cognitive skills can change. This is critically important in K-12 schools because of the poverty gap — the difference between a child’s chronological age and developmental age. In a healthy environment, a child’s developmental age will match his or her chronological age. In a high-risk environment, research shows that while a child’s chronological age is 5 years old, his or her developmental age is closer to 3 years old. This has a huge impact on school readiness and performance. Today, 51 percent of all students in …

Continue reading “Jumpstarting Learning for Children Living in Poverty”

Posted on

Instead of textbooks, why not pay teachers for content?

By Brandon Wilmarth As an English teacher in Oklahoma’s Moore Public Schools, I was recruited by some textbook providers to help them create content. It was a lot of fun, and I was happy to make some extra money doing it. But there are so many teachers in our district who are much more talented than I am. If I was developing curriculum materials that school systems across the nation were purchasing, they certainly could be doing this, too. So when I became a technology integration specialist for the district, one of my long-term goals was to leverage the expertise …

Continue reading “Instead of textbooks, why not pay teachers for content?”

Posted on

Top 3 Reasons the US Should Switch to Year-Round Schooling

The traditional school year, with roughly three months of vacation days every summer, was first implemented when America was an agricultural society. Learning to read, write, and perform basic arithmetic in classrooms was simply not as important as keeping up family farms and building the nation. The summer months were needed exclusively for farm work. Since then, we have completely changed as a nation—today, the majority of U.S. K-12 students aren’t spending summers off tilling fields or harvesting crops. However, the idea of summers off from school is alive and well. The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research finds …

Continue reading “Top 3 Reasons the US Should Switch to Year-Round Schooling”

Posted on

Using Year-Round Schools to Close the Achievement Gap

In comparison to children from low-income and minority groups, children belonging to middle class families enjoy more learning opportunities even during school breaks. Thus, extended school days may help low income and minority students achieve more learning throughout the year, and lose less of this new knowledge. Year-round schools offer a variety of specific advantages in addition to increased learning. Some of the significant advantages include better student performance, reduced absenteeism among students and teachers, better discipline, diminished stress on teachers, and better learning opportunities for students. Schools following multi-track programs also enjoy easing of problems due to overcrowding, proper …

Continue reading “Using Year-Round Schools to Close the Achievement Gap”

Posted on

Using Time to Improve Student Performance

Proponents of a year-round school year suggest that a shift in the time designated for teaching and learning will help students achieve more by minimizing summer learning loss, allowing for innovation and implementation of creative programs. It also provides the time needed to assist children who may benefit from the extra help. Many school districts around the country are in fact working toward increasing both the hours in each school day and the number of days schools are in session. Many education leaders are open to the idea of increasing the number of days per school year up to an additional month, …

Continue reading “Using Time to Improve Student Performance”