The Richmond Free Press on Year-Round Schooling
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29 responses to “The Richmond Free Press on Year-Round Schooling”
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I see no reason why year round schooling should change the performance gaps, nor is any offered.
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Thoughtful and groundbreaking. You may be the first person to ever claim that.
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I think David’s concern is a valid one. What do they plan to do differently during the summer that would yield different results that during the rest of the year? I’m not saying that extra time cannot be helpful. However, more of the same is likely to provide the same results.
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You are pessimistic about the RPS being able to accomplish anything no matter how long they have the kids. Pessimism about the RPS is certainly well founded, but giving up, which they have done in this case, absolutely requires state takeover of the division. Virginia needs a constitution change to make that happen. I am working on a column to propose just that.
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I believe they need to believe that their kids can achieve and that they can make it happen. Without those two beliefs in place, all the time in the world won’t make any difference.
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I think it is easy to bang on RPS. Bacon and Cranky have done it for years – and not without some justification.
But I’m not convinced a state takeover would fix it and I cite adjacent jurisdictions in Henrico and Chesterfield that also have schools as bad as Richmond but separate administrations – and other schools in their districts that do well.
In other words, there are seemingly successful school administrations in Henrico and Chesterfield that don’t do much better than Richmond for some of their schools.
Whatever they’re doing “right” for their successful schools, it’s not working in other schools n the same district.
And I’d wonder if the common thread for the low performing schools is low income neighborhoods where the kids are economically disadvantaged – i.e. not only low income but also parents with low education attainment levels.
This idea that the state will “take over’ without a whole lot of detail as to what the state would do different that is a proven and successful strategy – is not known or provided. It’s as if it’s a “magical’ thing the state does.
At least with Region VII, we do have a documented approach.
It’s not much better with the tax-credit schools. We are told that they are successful with economically disadvantaged kids.
And that’s basically it. Just the statement that they are successful.
If RPS is a dismal failure and we’re gonna bring in the Calvary to put it right – would be nice to know how.
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It all boils down to this. Regardless of what we do, the doctors’ and lawyers’ kids are going to be successful and it doesn’t take a concerted effort from educators to make that happen. On the other hand, it takes a lot of very careful, deliberate effort to make sure our at-risk students are successful, and it has to be systemic. Recently, I read an article about improvement science, and it’s basically about applying the scientific method to anything you’re trying to improve. This idea didn’t start in education, but it pretty well sums up a successful strategy that I have seen employed time and again in successful schools and districts. In a nutshell, it’s kind of how we operate.
https://hthunboxed.org/unboxed_posts/getting-more-students-into-college/ -
Yes. You said it clearly and unambiguously IMHO.
There’s a feeling sometimes that if you teach at-risk kids the same way you teach the other kids but just “more” and “longer’ they too will get it.
Some might. A lot do not and especially so in schools whose kids are predominately from low-income neighborhoods.
Easy to hammer RPS but why does Henrico and Chesterfield also have the same kind of low-performing schools ?
Those counties DO have the financial and educational resources to recruit and assign top-skilled teachers to the low performing schools and presumably do what RPS has not been able but instead they apparently do not and not working any better than RPS.
The critics of RPS might also address Henrico and Chesterfield on these issues.
Should the Gov/VDOE also take over the under-performing schools in Henrico and Chesterfield?
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You are exactly right. This problem needs to be addressed wherever it is found.
I do not think that VDOE could effectively address this problem. I would bet that the root problem is systemic/cultural, and I don’t think that “we’re here from the government and we’re here to help” can make much of a difference. In fact, VDOE has involved itself neck deep in these places for years under the Office of School Improvement, with no effect.
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Matt – do you think the average at-risk kid in Region VII is pretty much like the average at-risk kid in Richmond?
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I’m sure they’re no smarter.
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Absolutely! But, won’t those poor family farms and businesses lose a source of cheap labor? While we’re at it, let’s fix the clocks and time zones.
Three equal semesters, with seasonal breaks of two weeks. Of course, we’ll have to pay teachers more to give up all that quality time.
American style year round schooling is typically still 180 days of instruction. There are various models. 45 days of instruction and then 15 days off. Or 60 days of schooling with 20 days of vacation. I don’t like either one. Bump up the number days to 200. Arrange the schedule for trimesters. Slip in the breaks between the 3 semesters. That is how they roll in Japan. Copy Japan’s inclusion of uniforms and moral education.
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back in the day – if you “failed” the grade or even if you passed but barely, they’d encourage “summer school”.
But I’m told that nowdays “summer school” ain’t so good.
If not mistaken, VDOE offers some version of all-year school.
https://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/year-round/index.shtml
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I was fortunate to have a top shelf Geometry teacher for summer school heading into my senior year of high school. He was such a terrific man. I can still remember some of what was taught. Looking back that class helped me develop the spatial reasoning skills that ended up being very useful outside of Geometry. Most summer school programs are on line now. Too costly to have a building full of teachers for 6 additional weeks.
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I had similar good memories about some teachers but being a Marine brat, we’d move every 2-3 yrs it seemed and the different state school curriculums did not mesh well.
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I support the 200 day suggestion. But while rearranging the 180 days still yields 180 days, the problem of summer learning loss has always been the duration of the single break. That version of year-round school is better than what we have now.
This column was meant to highlight the debate within the urban Black community on this and other educational issues, including discipline, that is never written about in the MSM.
Black people are portrayed as monolithic for no other reason than white progressives view them that way. and want them to stay that way.
Portraying them as broadly diverse in opinion risks having poor Blacks abandon the Democratic ship.
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Amen Captain. School extension into the summer is always going to face the headwinds of the vacation industry. I remember their lobby was able to keep the old King’s Dominion law in place despite a long cry to open the school year earlier. The school year into the summer needs to be more than going through the motions of teaching, providing day care, and a square meal. The black community debaters need to send some new leaders to the school board. Maybe some new faces will step forward and lead. 200 days Captain. 180 will likely give us the same old results.
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If kids experience “summer learning loss”, they never had it in the first place. Certainly, kids get out of practice over the summer, but a quick refresher prior to each new skill brings them back up to speed quickly. If that is not the case, the student hadn’t mastered the skill in the previous year.
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Absolutely true in the case of RPS. The superintendent has proposed 40 more days of school each year for the 5,000 lowest performing kids in the system. The near-unanimous disapproval of that proposal by the school board shows they have given up on the children. That is the bottom line. It also means they should resign en masse. They won’t, which is why we need to amend Virginia’s constitution to let the state take over management and oversight of the division.
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My teacher friend(s) tell me that summer break is problematical for some kids, usually the ones who were behind already. They get back and they’ve lost much more than the others.
But when I was in school – summer school was “normal” if you were behind in a subject.
Does Region VII “do” real summer school?
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Yes sir.
The kids that lost it never really had it to begin with. There is a continuum of skill attainment that begins at ground zero and ends with mastery. If a kid leaves for summer not having mastered the skill, that puts them at a deficit beginning the next grade. Think of it as building a foundation, and each row of blocks is expected to be complete in a year. If the last row of block wasn’t completed the previous year, you can’t successfully add the next row without finishing the previous row.
This is why it is critical to get as many kids proficient each year. If you don’t, you’re just causing problems for the next year’s teachers. And when you think about it, when everything is aligned from Pre-K on up, you don’t have too much of a problem with that. For example, the only prerequisite for Kindergarten is being a certain age at a certain time- there are no academic prerequisites. When you look at the Standards of Learning for Kindergarten, there’s not a lot in there that would lead one to believe that most kids shouldn’t be able to master those skills. Then when you look at the first grade skills, it’s not that big of a stretch to imagine that most kids who come with intact prerequisites to that grade shouldn’t be able to master those skills. And so on…
That is not to say that we don’t have some kids who enroll in Kindergarten that will struggle. Some kids will come with significant, yet unidentified disabilities, and some will come that are so feral that they don’t know how to behave in public. However, Kindergarten teachers can still help those kids to be successful.
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I was able to find the budget that Kamras had submitted and the proposed duration and cost of the year round schooling. I updated the article to include this:
“They took the trouble to claim there is not enough money for year-round school, even though Mr. Kamras had shown them the way to accomplish it. The budget he submitted included year-round school for 5,000 high-needs students, which was expected to cost about $8 million.”
“A $381 million budget submission. Eight million dollars of that for extended schooling for high-needs students. Two percent. But teachers opposed it.”
“Not going to happen.”
That provides additional perspective on the control of the school board by the teachers
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Too bad. I went looking for the budget. It must be buried deep in the RCPS website that I found difficult to navigate. It seems the school board is focused on the new George Wythe school for now.
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This could be a role for the Lab Schools. Don’t need local funding. Separate pool of teachers and target the kids that are behind – during the summer so they might catch up and be on grade level when they start back to local schools.
Oh, and yes, they need to be transparent and accountable also.
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this could actually be a role for the tax credit schools who would offer summer school for the kids who are behind. I might even support that …. if they had similar transparency standards.
Well, there goes the family vacations, summer camps, tourism, the opportunity to learn unfettered whatever is your golden interest. I learned so much more on my own than I ever learned in school. Every summer my grandson and I would dig into a topic we knew little about: lichens and algae, moss, mushrooms, all while we rode horses and explored to our heart’s content. Of course, my parents and my daughter always encouraged and helped this kind of lifelong learning. I guess today’s parents who are truly invested in their children’s learning will keep them in private school where they can have their summers for enrichment, work experiences, and fun character building.
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Deborah, Everything you mentioned is wonderful, but those things might as well be on Mars for many kids from Richmond’s projects. For many of them the only structure in their lives is school.
This is seemingly a wide-open opportunity for Youngkin IMHO. He can easily assert the state and DOE to intervene in the interests of the economically disadvantaged kids who are behind and whose school systems have failed to educate.
I have no idea how the so-called “Lab” schools are to operate (does someone know?) but one path for them is to actually target the kids that are behind without need for local funding or approval.
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