Year Round School Fad Flopping

The Courier-Journal reports that four of the six remaining Louisville schools that still use a full, year-round calendar for classes (no traditional summer breaks), are dropping this once highly touted education fad idea.

Jefferson County Schools superintendent Shelly Berman wants to drop this expensive program in the two remaining schools, as well. The school system can save about $400,000 a year if all six schools go back to the traditional calendar.

I took a quick look at the CATS performance of the four schools that are dropping year-round schedules on their own. They are the Dixie, Breckenridge-Franklin, Roosevelt-Perry and Rangeland elementary schools. Only one of these schools met its undemanding CATS goal in 2008. The other three only made it to the “Progressing” category, and two of those three were in “Progressing – Decline,” which means their scores were lower in 2008 than in 2006. Proficiency rates in the four schools in math and reading ranged from highs only around 60 percent to lows around 40 percent.

Says Superintendent Berman, "I don't believe having a year-round calendar is the most effective system out there.” After 18 years of expensive reform, the lackluster performance cited above substantiates his comment.

Thus, another KERA education fad seems to be a slowly dying ember, joining math portfolios, performance events, whole language reading without any phonics, fuzzy math, and a host of other poorly researched theories that Kentucky educators once told us were the “research shows” best education practices.