Ask an Expert: Jim Cox and Pat Puleo
Measuring Up: A Parent's Guide to Testing, Grades, and Assessments

Are there any studies that show whether students year-round schools or schools on a traditional calendar score better on tests?

There's nothing definite out there. In year-round schools, calendars are set so that students, who would normally have a long summer hiatus, have shorter breaks spaced throughout the year. Those break times give schools the chance to offer intense intervention programs for struggling students. Some schools, for example, offer a mini-summer school or intervention programs during intersession. Students might attend only half a day. Most educators feel that it's beneficial for low-performing students to receive instruction in this way, without large amounts of downtime.

That works as long as the intersession lessons link to the classroom learning and aren't isolated attempts at skill development. If the school is also a multi-track school (meaning different groups of students are on different schedules, which is common in year-round schools), the more difficult issue is creating a sense of common vision among the staff, since there is never a time when the entire staff is working at the site together. Different staff members, working at different times, can create what amounts to different organizational cultures within one school. Or one particular track of students may have different group needs than the other groups.

Here's where you can find a variety of kinds of information on year-round versus traditional schools.

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