- Oregonlive/Helen Jung/Sept 13th, 2016
- Key Points: Rosa Parks Elementary celebrates the double digit gain that students at the north Portland school have shown on standardized tests. Despite the success, the high poverty school still drastically falls behind the average on the number of third, fourth, and fifth graders on the Smarter Balanced Standardized exam. In 2014, the elementary school has made a huge transition from the traditional September-June schedule, to a year round schedule.
- Relevance: Parents and teachers talk about the benefits of the year round schooling and how they are spending much less time reviewing material from the previous year. With the amount of poverty and low test scores, teachers and families are willing to take a risk on the year round schooling if it means there might be an increase in academics within the school. Since academics were already so low, there is much less of a risk if the year round schooling ends up not being the best option.
One of the points in this article, the idea of year-round schooling, is one that I have long agreed with and advocated for. Our present schooling is based on an agrarian society schedule, which does not fit our larger society any longer. The bulk of our population no longer farms for a living, and those that do, have modern farming methods that do not require the intensive "hands to work" that previous farming methods relied upon. To that end, our children are better able to attend school year-round, with longer breaks during the winter and spring months and shorter breaks during summer. There is too much learning lost during the long summer months. Teachers spend between 3 weeks and 5 weeks at the beginning of the school year reviewing knowledge from the previous year. These lost weeks could better be spend building upon previous knowledge rather than reviewing. I hope the trend of year-round schooling catches on.
ReplyDeleteAs the mother of school-age children I can speak from that perspective also. Having unoccupied children at home for 3 months in not the picnic it is touted to be, especially for those parents who work full time. It is always a scramble to find camps and jobs to keep the children out of trouble and occupied during the summer months.
Thanks for the article and synopsis! As we begin to see new strategies and pilot tests implemented across the state and nation, it will be interesting to see if this year round schedule helps with the SBAC exams for the Kinders when they become 5th graders. Of course each student and child has a different growth and learning development, but to see the gradual results throughout ES would be great to research and analyze. One thing that would be interesting to see is how the school was able to create the willingness to achieve well on the SBAC. With the older levels, the students sometimes realize that there is no correlation between their SBAC results and their grade for the class they are taking. If the school was able to find methods for intrinsic motivation I hope they will be willing to share!
ReplyDeleteGreat work all around and thanks for your article!