Academic Impact of Year-Round Schooling:

An Annotated Bibliography

26 September, 1998

This is a review of some of the representative studies and reviews of year-round school calendars. Studies were selected for review because of their relevance, detailed analysis, or because they have figured in discussions of the year-round calendar in Auburn City Schools. The overall conclusion to be gained from studies of the effects of year-round schooling on academic achievement is that no such benefits can be expected. The first set of notes describe studies for which I had access to the original paper. The second set are of summaries from the ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) database. Each set is listed in order of the year of publication. The reports considered span the period from 1978 - 1996, with most having been published since 1992.

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The Following are From the Full Reports

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• Merino, B.J. (1983) The impact of year-round schooling: A review. Urban Education,. 18, 298-316.
• This is a review of the literature available at that time. Concluded that while YRS may be useful for some things, it has no beneficial or detrimental on academics.
• "Most studies found no significant differences between the two types of schedules with two actually showing negative effects for year-round schooling." These were elementary students in 3rd through 6th grade in reading, language arts, and math. In a school with 50% Spanish surnamed, algebra 9th grade students on a 45/15 plan performed worse than a control school.
• My conclusion: There's no effect to be seen. These effects appear scattered across a lot of comparisons and could be random and insignificant.

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• Cooper, H., Nye, B., Charlton, K., Lindsay, J., Greathouse, S. (1986) The effects of summer vacation on achievement test scores: A narrative and Meta-analytic review. Bulletin of Educational Research,66, 227-268.
• Some students benefitted from long summer vacations, some forgot things, but in most studies the net effect of summer vacation was close to zero. On average, students returned to school in the Fall close to where they left off in the spring, with some forgetting of facts in which they had not become fluent.
• There was some evidence that students diagnosed as learning disabled or considered to be at-risk showed some loss during the summer, especially where the memorization of facts is required.
• Students who were able to use the summer vacation by reading or going to summer camps benefitted from these opportunities. It is important to note that the analysis is of the entire summer vacation. If you take his results and apply it to reducing summer vacation by a few weeks, then the only conclusion is that any effect would be too small to detect.
• Extrapolating his results to estimate the consequences of having 6-9 month gaps that can result from block scheduling suggests that such effects could be felt and measured.
• Reasonable conclusions from this review are
• the reduction in summer vacation produced by year-round schools would probably not result in a detectable benefit for at-risk or learning-disabled children, or the effect would be small
• a year-round calendar would prevent children who attend summer activities from doing so
• the long lag between courses in similar content areas (e.g., 6-9 month lags between math courses) imposed by Auburn's block schedule presents a serious problem.

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• Alcorn, R. (1992) Test scores: Can year-round school raise them? Thrust for Educational Leadership. April. Pp 12-15.
• Review of experience with San Diego school system. This is a very large school system that went to year-round schooling because of population growth coupled with painful cuts in state funding for education resulted in severe overcrowding. Demographically this is a very different system from Auburn's. For example, this is a large urban system that includes a sizeable population of students with limited proficiency in English. The transition to year-round schooling alleviated much of the overcrowding
• . "The year round school organization should be considered as instructional strategy to meet the needs of . . . educational disadvantaged students . . . students who are in danger of dropping out of school and can make up work during intersessions, and limited-English proficient students who may benefit from a language acquisition program that provides for continuous learning througout the year."
• A more detailed picture is described in an ERS report of the San Diego experience (summarized below) and the picture there is much more mixed. Note, however, that this change in the calendar included intersessions, which Auburn City Schools is not considering.

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• O'Neil and Solomon. (1993) When less is more. The American School Board Journal. April. 39-41.
• Encourages the use of year-round schooling as a solution to enrollment increases.
• ". . . year round schooling has not raised test scores, but neither has student achievement suffered."

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• Campbell, W.D. (1994) Year-round schooling for academically at-risk students: Outcomes and perceptions of participants in an elementary program. ERS Spectrum, 12, Summer, 20-24.
• "Analysis of a number of student outcomes (basic skills gains, absences, promotion rates, number of books read, and reading levels) found no significant differences in favor of the year-round students. However, students, administrators, and parents in this study generally believed that the year-round schedule produced benefits in some of these same student outcomes. When perceptions and statistically significant student outcomes were compared, teachers were more accurate in their perceptions."

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• ERS report # 7112. Report on single-track year-round education in San Diego unified school district. (1994). 87 pages, 25 tables, 9 figures.
• Detailed analysis of San Diego elementary and middle schools. Some were on a single track year-round school, others were not. The schools studied had been on their calendar for at least 10 years before the study began, and the study lasted for 3 years.
• Studied only the stable students who had experienced the year-round school (or not, in controls), about 45% of the total population. The elementary schools on the year-round calendar did better than traditional, but in middle school, the traditional schools outperformed the year-round schools. The information available on the middle schools was less comprehensive, however. No pre-test was available prior to converting to year-round calendar but the schools roughly matched (as well as they could be) on socioeconomic status and other demographics.
• There were more student absences in the single-track year-round school, especially in the summer. This resulted in appreciable loss of state revenue, since state funding is based on the number of "student-days," as is the case in Alabama.
• Appendix A indicates considerable revenue loss in the single-track year-round school because of absences: about $800,000 loss in the year-round school compared with $428,000 in the traditional school (rounded to the nearest thousand).
• There were no consistent differences in teacher absences. Increased expense were incurred in the single-track year-round school. Other expenses associated with the single-track year-round school were transportation, staffing, and food services.
• I saw no mention of intersession (I could have overlooked it), but I believe that the San Diego system uses one. See the Alcorn review, summarized elsewhere.

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• Roby, D.E. (1995). Comparison of a year-round school and a tradition school: reading and mathematics achievement. ERS Spectrum. 1995, 7-10.
• Brief, sketchily detailed study. Subjects were "a sample" of 6th grade students in the two schools being compared. The study was conducted by a principal in the school district, who was an author of one of the dissertations reviewed by Kneese.
• There were some ambiguities in the description of the statistical analysis. The effect sizes reported were much larger than typically found in this literature (between 1 and 3 standard deviations compared with 0 to 0.1 standard deviations in other studies). Even so, some effects were statistically significant, others were not.
• One thing is noteworthy. The school went to the year-round calendar to alleviate a severe overcrowding problem. After the transition, this school and the comparison school had roughly equal class sizes. One possible interpretation is that the relief from overcrowding was a powerful influence over the results. Another is that the statistical analysis is not appropriate to the structure of the data that they had.

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• ERS Report # 7113. Evaluation of the changes at Caldwell Elementray (Memphis, Tennessee) 1995-96. 77 pages, 14 tables, 3 figures.
• Page 19 summarizes the effects as rather mixed. "The percentile scores of Caldwell students in grades 3 and 6 improved from 1995 to 1996 on each of the five major subtests. In grade 2, the percentile scores . . . improved in social studies but declined in the other four sub-tests. In grades 4 and 5 the percentile scores . .. were lower in 1996 than in 1995 of all five major subtests. In 1995 Caldwell's percentiles were below the district's percentiles in 22 of 25 grade levels and subtests and in 1996 Caldwell was below the district in 23 of 25 grade levels and subtests.
• Oddly enough, the teachers who were interviewed claimed that the shorter breaks contributed to greater retention. It is important to note that many changes were implemented, including an after-school tutoring program.
• There was no effect on student attendance (rates were within 0.3% of one another).

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• ERS report # 7111. Evaluation of the three-year year-round education pilot program.: Irving (TX) independent school district, 1995. 86 pages, 12 tables, 3 figures.
• Statistics and lots of data. A simple count of the direction of effects reveals no pattern. Differences were small, and divided between improvement and declines.
• Year-round schools were "marginally more effective for some economically disadvantaged students." Also, no discernable effect on attendance by either teachers or students.

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• Naylor, C. (1995) Do year-round schools improve student learning? An annotated bibliography and synthesis of the research. BCTF Research Report.Section XII.
• "There are a substantial number of studies which are conducted by researchers (with no vested interest in either supporting or opposing reay-round schooling) which conclude that there appears to be no significant difference in achievement between student in year-round and students in traditional calendar schools."
• "Of the studies which conclude that students in year-round schools do achieve at a higher level . . . the differences in achievement are rarely significant" To paraphrase: sometimes the authors provide a far more optimistic summary than the data can support.
• "If the goal of education is to maximize the number of students in poor areas who pass standardized tests in a cost-effective manner then some year-round sites can contribute to this goal. If the mandate of the education system is wider, and if equity is of any concern, then year-round schools are clearly more limited on the evidence to date."

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• Kneese, C.C. (1996) Review of research on student learning in year-round education. Journal of Research and Development in Education. 29, 60-71.
• Reviews 15 studies of YRS conducted in previous decade. Only two were single-track and these were reported in unpublished doctoral dissertations. Asserts that older studies were flawed and the studies reviewed here are better.
• Summary from mutitrack schools indicates no consistent effect.
• The two single-track studies examined one grade in one school. One on YRS for a year and the other for two years. The sample was small. Sizable improvement in test scores.
• Summary says most schools (these? don't know) on STYR do so voluntarily, not due to economic pressure, and are generally middle class.
• Also points out that the Hawthorne effect is a real possibility. That is, when an institution experiences a change of some kind, even as innocuous as the type of lighting, there is a transient effect on performance and then things return to the previous status.
• This author concludes that "practitioners moving toward year-round education have little basis to expect that in and of itself YRE {year round education} 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."

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THE FOLLOWING ARE FROM ERIC SUMMARIES.

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• Evans, R.A. (1978) A comparative analysis of the 45-15 plan and the traditional calendar in the Prince William county Public Schools of Virginia. Executive Summary. {from ERIC summary}
• "...education afforded by the two plans did not differ but attitudes about them were considerably polarized."

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• Anon (1987) Year-round schools. "What research says about" series. Number 8. National Eduation Association data search. {from ERIC summary}.
• "The review found inconclusive evidence linking year-round schools to an increase in student academic achievement. Year-round schools can lead to a moderate savings in potential building costs are considered, but higher costs if potential building costs are not considered."

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• Howell, V.T. (1988) An examination of year-round education: Pros and cons that challenge schooling in America. Evaluative report. {from ERIC Summary}.
• "Converting to YRE creates many difficulties and shows no clear advantages. The only systems benefitting over time are those for whom overcrowding had become a devastating problem."

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• Rasberry, Quinn (1992). Year-round schools may not be the answer. (ERIC accession number ED353658). {From Eric Summary}
• "Three large urban school districts (Los Angeles, Houston, and Prince William County, VA) experimenting with year-round education found no significant positive effects on academic achievement. In two other districts (Lodi, California, and Orange County, Florida) other factors may account for increased student achievement."
• ". . . year-round schools are not cost-effective to operate unless the student population substantially exceeds traditional school capacity . . . there are increased expenses for air conditioning, maintenance, and staff salaries."

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• Rogers, L. (1993) The pros and cons of year-round education at the elementary school level. Unpublished thesis. {From ERIC Summary).
• "The majority of research indicates that Year-Round Education 1) does not conclusively result in increased academic achievement; 2) offers a moderate savings in building and maintenance costs, but an increase in personnel salaries and cooling costs."

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