Abstract: Year-round schooling

Calendar Effects

Melissa McCartney 

Does the organization of the school calendar affect student learning? Year-round schooling, which distributes school days with short, frequent breaks, is becoming more popular because it is thought to prevent the summer learning loss that occurs under a more traditional school calendar. Using longitudinal data from California public schools over a 9-year period, Graves examined the effect of year-round school calendars on nationally standardized test performance of traditionally disadvantaged students. Analysis showed that year-round calendars, especially multitrack year-round calendars in which the student body is never all in attendance at the same time, have a larger negative impact on the lower end of the distribution of scores, with Hispanics/Latinos and low-socioeconomic status students experiencing a larger fall in performance than the overall population. African American students are more negatively affected than the overall student population with respect to reading. Policy-makers take note: These results present an additional cost of implementing year-round calendars.

Econ. Educ. Rev. 30, 1281 (2011).