Nothing beats American traditions. Take the celebrations on the Fourth of July, or Labor Day. Don’t even think about disrespecting baseball or football. And then there is the school year. The sacred right of passage that carried us all from September through June. As American as the flag, Mom, and apple pie. You didn’t question it. It’s always been that way from the very beginning. September through June was school and all that that represented in every community across America.

But there’s a movement afoot to change all that and the impetus for the change is not that it will turn out better students who will become better Americans. It’s not based on better usage of facilities, resources, funding, or even time honored traditions. No, it’s being based on test scores and the image of American standardized test scores on the world stage.

President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan are calling for more school districts to consider going to year-round school schedules, which are euphemistically being referred to as “balanced schedules”. The idea has been around for a century and currently about 5% of American students are on the year-round schedule. Of course this doesn’t mean that the kids are in class the whole year. The typical “balanced schedule” consists of a 2-3 week break between marking periods. In essence, summer vacations would become a thing of the past.

This desire on the part of the Administration is being driven solely by the perception that American schools are not as good as the schools in other countries, as indicated by standardized test scores. The Administration’s claim is that our 180 day school calendar cannot compete with other countries who have a school calendar that is longer than ours. An examination of the length of the school year around the world indicates that most countries have a school year schedule very similar to ours.

The idea of a year-round school calendar has bee around for one-hundred years but has never caught on in a large way. Why? Tradition steeped in the early days of compulsory education in a time when the American society was predominantly agrarian is probably the main reason. The summer months were used for tending the crops and for harvesting so it made sense for the kids to be home for the summer months to help out. And as the decades rolled by and generations of Americans went through the system, the tradition grew stronger and stronger.

But today, in an atmosphere of high-stakes, state sponsored testing, politicians and school administrators are grasping at anything to improve test scores. The problem isn’t how long the school year is, or what time of the year the kids go to school. The problem is that we have been purposely distracted from what schools are really for. And the distraction is the artificial creation of a “crisis” in test scores. That our kids can’t compete against other countries on tests!

So what if Japanese children do better on international tests in math and science. Their culture is obviously so different than ours. Their philosophy towards education is also vastly different than ours. Fragment their society into 50,000-plus school districts. Import as many immigrants, legal and illegal, as we have in our schools. My school alone has over 50 different nationalities represented in it. How many different nationalities are in the typical Japanese school? Introduce the level of social and economic problems we face into their schools and then let’s compare test scores!

The answer isn’t in year-round school. Studies have shown that a year-round school is no more effective than the traditional schedule. Studies have also shown that it ends up being more expensive than traditional schedules. And in these tough economic times who can afford an increase in spending unless it was 100% guaranteed to work. Year-round school has worked in places, but it should not be considered as the “fix” for improving test scores across the entire nation.

The problem is the fact that No Child Left Behind has been a costly failure. It has ripped the guts out of American education by placing unachievable goals on schools and districts in unfunded mandates. It has created a generation of test-takers who cannot think beyond what’s on the test. It has created classrooms that are devoid of creativity and self-reliance and replaced it with a philosophy of doing everything necessary to get test scores up at all costs.

We need to say enough is enough. We need re-focus our efforts on what kind of people we want our kids to be and not what kind of test-takers they can be. Then, and only then, can we honestly begin to think about meaningful reform and lasting results. What kind of people do we want our kids to be. What a unique idea!

Author Bio: John Turano is a full time public high school science teacher who also creates online home-schooling science courses for middle and high school students. You can sign up for his free video course on the life and contributions of Louis Pasteur here: TeachYourKidScience.com.

Category: Education
Keywords: education,school,homeschool,students,kids,learn