Lost Cause
It's a wrap!
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2001
- Posts
- 30,949
Sounds like a good idea, as long as I don't have to do it anymore! I think they out to have 40hrs per week, 300 days a year schools based on a college type of infrastructure, and get the Feds out of the school institution. (Pay as you go)
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Aug. 16 — More than a dozen school districts in Florida — and others in Texas, Maryland, Kentucky, Colorado and California — have moved up the opening day of school this year, cutting short summer vacations and requiring students to report a week or more earlier than in recent years.
The reason, in many instances, is to give students an earlier start on preparing for state standardized tests, which are usually given in late winter or early spring.
While the tests are not necessarily new, schools face stiff federal sanctions, including the loss of some federal money, this year under the new Bush education law if they fail to meet specified goals for progress on those tests.
In Florida, the state has added a stick: third graders who fail a state reading test in the spring will not be promoted.
Many of the students starting school early will be ending earlier next year as well, some as early as mid-May. For financial reasons, the districts have not added substantially to the standard school year, which is about 180 days. Schools in at least half the districts in Florida opened in the first 10 days of August.
Experts on educational scheduling who have long pushed for the reduction of the 10-week summer break — a vestige of when planting and harvesting schedules influenced the academic calendar — say that the increasing acceptance of August as back-to-school month is an important psychological shift for some children, parents and teachers.
"Breaking from the traditional schedule does open up lots of possibilities, one of which might be longer school years or different kinds of schedules in schools," said Michael D. Rettig, a professor of education at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va.
Another reason, in addition to testing, that districts are beginning the year earlier is to accommodate so-called block schedules, in which a high school student might take a year's worth of chemistry in the first semester and a year's worth of history in the same slot in the second semester.
To complete the first semester before Christmas, the school year must often begin several weeks before Labor Day.
In Colorado Springs, for example, school will begin on Tuesday this year, compared with Sept. 2 five years ago, so high school students will not have to spend their winter breaks studying for first-semester exams.
Others schools around the country — about 3,000, compared with half as many a decade ago — are now operating on so-called year-round calendars, in which the summer vacation is shortened and vacations during the year are lengthened (often to three weeks) and staggered.
Some schools have adopted such schedules to thin the populations of crowded schools, allowing some students to be on vacation while others are in class. Other schools have done so to give struggling students extra time to catch up in specially scheduled remedial sessions.
While many states defer to individual districts to decide when they wish to begin the year, Texas passed a law last year that set the week of Aug. 21 as the earliest a district could open. Since then, 90 districts — about 1 in 10 statewide — have received permission from the state to open earlier, often by a week or more, to get a jump on the year's curriculum.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Aug. 16 — More than a dozen school districts in Florida — and others in Texas, Maryland, Kentucky, Colorado and California — have moved up the opening day of school this year, cutting short summer vacations and requiring students to report a week or more earlier than in recent years.
The reason, in many instances, is to give students an earlier start on preparing for state standardized tests, which are usually given in late winter or early spring.
While the tests are not necessarily new, schools face stiff federal sanctions, including the loss of some federal money, this year under the new Bush education law if they fail to meet specified goals for progress on those tests.
In Florida, the state has added a stick: third graders who fail a state reading test in the spring will not be promoted.
Many of the students starting school early will be ending earlier next year as well, some as early as mid-May. For financial reasons, the districts have not added substantially to the standard school year, which is about 180 days. Schools in at least half the districts in Florida opened in the first 10 days of August.
Experts on educational scheduling who have long pushed for the reduction of the 10-week summer break — a vestige of when planting and harvesting schedules influenced the academic calendar — say that the increasing acceptance of August as back-to-school month is an important psychological shift for some children, parents and teachers.
"Breaking from the traditional schedule does open up lots of possibilities, one of which might be longer school years or different kinds of schedules in schools," said Michael D. Rettig, a professor of education at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va.
Another reason, in addition to testing, that districts are beginning the year earlier is to accommodate so-called block schedules, in which a high school student might take a year's worth of chemistry in the first semester and a year's worth of history in the same slot in the second semester.
To complete the first semester before Christmas, the school year must often begin several weeks before Labor Day.
In Colorado Springs, for example, school will begin on Tuesday this year, compared with Sept. 2 five years ago, so high school students will not have to spend their winter breaks studying for first-semester exams.
Others schools around the country — about 3,000, compared with half as many a decade ago — are now operating on so-called year-round calendars, in which the summer vacation is shortened and vacations during the year are lengthened (often to three weeks) and staggered.
Some schools have adopted such schedules to thin the populations of crowded schools, allowing some students to be on vacation while others are in class. Other schools have done so to give struggling students extra time to catch up in specially scheduled remedial sessions.
While many states defer to individual districts to decide when they wish to begin the year, Texas passed a law last year that set the week of Aug. 21 as the earliest a district could open. Since then, 90 districts — about 1 in 10 statewide — have received permission from the state to open earlier, often by a week or more, to get a jump on the year's curriculum.
