What does the research say about the benefits of Year-Round School to "at risk" children?
20 October 1998
From:M. Christopher Newland, Ph.D.303 Bibb AvenueAuburn, Alabama, 36830
To:Board of EducationAuburn City Schools855 E. Samford AveAuburn, AL 36830.
Dear Members of the Board of Education,
In October of 1998, Auburn City Schools (ACS) distributed to parents, teachers, and others associated with ACS a report called "Exploration of An Alternative Calender." In that and in other discussions of the year-round calender, the leadership of ACS has said that this alternative calender is being considered to assist the at-risk child in the ACS, citing research on year-round calenders in support of this claim. The relevant sentences (with the footnotes and bolding as in the original) from the ACS report "Exploration of An Alternative Calender" read as follows:
"[T]he majority of studies do show that YRS benefits the at-risk student1"
"The at risk student is benefited by the restructuring of the 180 school days (Auburn City Schools calender is 175 student days)2"
The two superscripts refer to nine studies offered in support of this statement. The citations are incomplete but I believe that I have found all nine among the materials made available by ACS in the library. I have read these studies and offer my conclusions here.
One study (Cooper) investigates academic loss during the summer vacation and finds that some students gain, some lose, but most show little change between Spring and Fall. This report applies only if we are considering reducing summer vacation to zero. The authors of this paper write that their report cannot be applied to alternative school calenders, so this report says nothing about reducing summer vacation from 11 weeks to, say, 7 weeks. Four studies (Campbell, Greenfield, Haenn, Peltier) report no statistically significant effects of year-round calenders on reading, math, or other academically relevant tasks. One of these (Greenfield) did not appear to involve at-risk students and the relevance of the others to at-risk children varies. One study (Roby) compared one year-round school against one traditional-calender school and found a difference in math scores. While the effect was attributed to the calender, it is just as likely that one school had a better math teacher than the other. No details about the proportion of at-risk children were presented in that study. One citation (Kneese and Knight) concerns a two-page transcript of a paper read at a professional meeting. It appears sophisticated and solid methodologically, but little-to-no information is provided about demographics or interventions that accompanied the year-round calender. It is simply too brief to evaluate or to use for such an important decision. One study (Curry) is a detailed report of 12 elementary schools in Austin Texas. At these schools, 50 to 85% of students were Hispanic. Benefits were reported in Hispanic students, for many of whom English was a second language. Effects in African-American or White students were more variable across the schools studied, but there were more increases than decreases in test scores (however, the results of this study have recently been questioned because of test score fabrication by the school system. See note below under review of Curry et al.). In some cases increases in average test scores were accompanied by declines in the percent of students passing these basic-skills test. This is difficult to reconcile, but it could suggest that good students got better and struggling students struggled more in some subjects. The authors noted that the year-round calender was so disruptive in the middle school that it should be abandoned. One study (Shields and LaRocque) is a literature review conducted for the British Columbia Ministry of Education. It says that there is evidence that at-risk students benefit, and points out that the reason for the benefit could be concomitant reforms, and not the change in the calender per se. Much of the recent literature was evidently not available at the time of the writing; many of the studies mentioned in ACS discussions were not included in this summary.
Detailed summaries are attached, listed in alphabetical order by first author. I write to point out that the evidence in favor of academic benefits of a year-round calender is not there. What evidence is available implies that there will be none.
Thank you for your attention to this rather long letter.
Sincerely, Christopher Newland, Ph.D.
Summary of Studies Cited in "Exploration of An Alternative Calender" by Auburn City Schools to Support the Claim that Year-Round Schools Help At-Risk Children.
Summaries prepared by Christopher Newland, Ph.D. 19-October-1998
This describes a 45-15, single track YRS with 60 second-grade Chapter 1 (Title 1) students in the YRS. 30 students from 4 traditional schools matched by "home school attendance data." This was done in the Carrrollton City Schools, (OH). Statistics were done by t tests. It compared test scores with the perceptions of students, parents, teachers and administrators.
On the objective measures, there was no significant difference in 1) achievement gains, 2) absences, 3) promotion rates, 4) reading level or 5) books read. The number of books read came closest to "statistically significant"; the YRS students read fewer books than the traditional year students.
On subjective measures, parents, students, and administrators overwhelmingly thought that the YRS helped improve basic skills, and administrators also thought it helped attendance. The assessments of teachers, using subjective measures, came closest to the conclusions derived from the objective tests.
This was not an empirical study, but a review of several empirical studies, one a very large federal one. No study reviewed involved an alternative year calender. The studies compared the performance of children on different tests just before summer vacation with their performance when they return in the Fall. Any conclusions can only apply to a proposal to reduce summer vacation to 0. The analysis is rather involved, but the results can be summarized.
Some children return to school from the summer break knowing more than they did the previous spring. These usually are the children who take advantage of the summer by reading, attending camps, etc. Some children return in the Fall knowing less. For most, however, the loss is pretty close to zero. The overall effect is usually small, and depends on subject matter and economic advantage. A "stem-and-leaf" diagram (a type of data display taught in first-year Algebra in ACS) shows that the bulk of the distribution of effects lies very close to zero, and that the mean is affected by points at the extremes of the distribution.
Concepts, reading skills, math concepts, grammar, and similar things ("knowing how to do something") are relatively unaffected by the summer break. This form of knowledge is akin to knowing how to ride a bicycle or how to carry out well-practiced arithmetic tasks ("once you've learned to ride a bicycle. . . ."). Computation, spelling, and science facts showed some loss. This type of learning is sometimes referred to as "knowing that," as in knowing that WWII began in 1941. This might involve foreign language vocabulary, arithmetic facts (e.g., 9 X 7=63) and similar things. The study says nothing about when forgetting occurs.
Perhaps most important is their conclusion that children who have the opportunity to do things during the summer improve on tests of some subjects and return better off than in the Spring. Those children who do not have these advantages either show no improvement or, in some cases, loss.
While there is some discussion of alternative calenders, the authors point out that this report does not apply to claims of benefits obtained by these calenders:
The present synthesis does not assess whether alternative calenders, such as those that include the present number of school days but distribute shorter and more frequent vacations throughout the year, are actually more effective than the present calender. (P 264, top)
We suspect that there is much less research on these (weekends, spring break, winter break) intervals. (P. 264, bottom).
Recent information relating to the Austin school system study reviewed below:
In an item on National Public Radio's Sunday Edition (25 October 1998) it was reported that Austin (Texas) Independent School System fabricated the test scores of Hispanic and African American students. The tests fabricated, the TAAS (achievement tests used by the state of Texas) are used to rate schools and districts, carry great weight in policy decisions, are noticed by businesses considering relocation, and by house hunters looking for school districts. In all cases of fabrication, low scores were made higher, apparently in an effort to prevent a school from failing to meet state standards.
When I reviewed the nine studies cited in "Fact Sheet 2" to support the claim that YRS improves the scores of at-risk students, only one citation (Curry et al.,1997?) credibly supported that claim. That one was a long (greater than 80 page), detailed report describing the scores of Hispanic and African American students on the TAAS in the Austin Independent School District. We now know that those scores are tainted by this fabrication.
This summarizes the experience of 12 elementary schools in Austin Texas that went to a single-track year-round school. The accompanying report is greater than 130 pages long. The authors conclude that YRS was beneficial in these elementary schools, whose demographics were very different from Auburn's, but that it was so disruptive at the middle school that it should not be continued there. YRS was not imposed in isolation, but accompanied by other reforms that varied across the different schools. Overall the results would be encouraging to people in similar school districts, as more improvements than declines were noted. Some details about this report are important:
This report describes a rural, agricultural Hawaii school district located in a very supportive community whose children generally test above Hawaii averages. They went to single-track YRS voluntarily. Both pretesting and post-testing were performed, in some cases for a few years before and after the change. They had an intersession program that was popular and well attended. Some data were offered on standardized tests (Standard Achievement Test) and a locally developed test (no details offered). Little data were presented on demographics, and nothing was said about at-risk children. No evidence for academic change was found and the plan was expensive, even if popular:
"One major expectation--that student academic performance would improve--did not materialize in all the ways anticipated." (p. 255.)
"Results did not demonstrate significant score increase across the years in any of the content areas. Neither did the scores of a single cohort of students, tracked for two years before and then again after YRE implementation suggest improved academic performance across time." (P. 256) [It further said that sporadic improvements were seen on a locally developed test, but no details were provided.]
The first year YRS was implemented, the system experienced a 20% increase in budget. This declined to 4% and then -1% over the next two years, while other state systems increased. The overall increase over three years was 10%. " . . . the YRE program remained more expensive to operate." (Page 259).
This describes two year-round elementary (K-5) schools in the Durham Public School district. Attending the YRS was voluntary. Intersession remediation and enrichment were offered and were voluntary. Between the two schools the demographics were: 43% African American and 53% White; 15.5% were low socioeconomic status and 84.5% were not. About 10 - 15% of students attended intersession. Only 25% - 50% of those attending intersession were free/reduced lunches. The small number of at-risk children attending intersession remediation was discussed as a problem.
Since this was a voluntary plan, three groups of students could be identified for study: 1) students who chose to stay in the YRS (N=905, 2) students who transferred in from outside the attendance zone (N=115), and 3) those who transferred out to a partner traditional year school (N=159).
They did a pretest in May 1994 and a post-test in May 1995. All groups improved. Even those who moved out to a traditional year calender. While there is much discussion of impressions of how the YRS helped, there was no statistically significant effect of "group." That is, it did not matter whether the students stayed, moved in, or moved out.
This is a 2-page transcript of a paper read at the American Educational Research Association. It is very brief and evidently has not been published in the open literature. It describes ten "dual-track" schools (grades 4, 5, 6) in an urban school district "in the Southwest." In the dual track school, some students are on "year-round" and some are on a traditional school calender (TSC). It is not clear how this decision was made for any particular student. Each student on the YRS calender had two matched students on the YRS calender: one matched for score on a reading test and another matched for score on a mathematics test. As described, the matching of students and statistical analyses described sound sophisticated and competently performed. YRS generally outperformed TSC students, and the effects were also seen in at-risk students. No details were provided about other interventions accompanying YRS, about how students elected to go on YRS calender in the first place, or the makeup of the student population. The difficulty with this study is that it is very brief, unpublished, and does not provide the information required to determine what caused the effects reported.
In a recently published review of research on year-round calenders (Kneese, C.C. Review of research on student learning in year-round education. Journal of Research and Development in Education. 1996, 29, 60-71), the senior author, concluded that "practitioners moving toward year-round education have little basis to expect that in and of itself YRE will significantly accelerate achievement unless a dedicated movement to educational reform, including factors such as utilization of the intersession for remediation and curricula changes is accomplished." Kneese also noted that some benefits attributed to year-round calenders could represent a "Hawthorne Effect." This is a sort of institutional placebo effect. When an institution experiences a change, even one as innocuous as a change in the type of lighting, there is a transient effect on performance and then things return to the previous status.
This is a narrative review of some of the advantages and disadvantages of year-round schools. The emphasis is on multitrack plans. The following two quotes are relevant:
"Studies have indicated that there is no significant difference in achievement (as measured by standardized tests) between students on a year-round schedule and those on a traditional nine month schedule" (p. 122, 3 references cited in support).
"One of the advantages often cited for year-round education is the need for less review time because of shorter vacation. For all but the slow students, the four to six weeks of review in the traditional school is wasted time" (p. 122). The support for this last claim is a single citation to Ballinger, the founder of an advocacy group called "National Association for Year-Round Education."
This is a brief report (4 pages) of some 6th graders from two schools in West Carrollton City School District. One school was on YRS, the other was not. There were 74 students from one school and 65 from the other. The author, a principal in the district, asserted that demographically the schools were the same and representative of other schools in W. Carrollton. Nothing was said about at-risk. A comparison between only these two schools was conducted. The YRS school had been on that calender for many years so pretesting was not possible. Other comparison schools might have been examined, but were not.
The students in the YRS school did better on math and reading than the students in the traditional year school. It was said, without supporting documentation, that the boys in the YRS school did better on reading than those in the traditional school. Otherwise, there were no gender differences.
The YRS school had been on it since 70's. This is the only YRS in the district, and it did so b/c of overcrowding. This suggests that it is multitrack, but the report does not say one way or the other.
It is impossible to conclude that the difference is due to the school's calender. One of the schools may have had a better math teacher than the other.
This is a literature review of many effects of year-round calenders, and academic benefits comprise a small portion of the report. The statement is made that there is "compelling evidence" that there are positive effects in at-risk children. As the authors point out, it is quite possible, if not likely, that the improvements are associated with concomitant reforms such as remediation, smaller classes, and other interventions. The review does not mention the recent studies described above. In fact, the empirical literature that evidently was available when this was written must have been pretty small, as few of the studies described in ACS deliberations were mentioned.