Ayres, Crystal. “16 Pros and Cons of Year Round School.” Vittana.org, vittana.

org/16-pros-and-

cons-of-year-round-school. Accessed 16 June 2019.

In the article “16 Pros and Cons of Year Round School.” , Crystal Ayres discusses the positives
and negatives of having year round school. The pros of year round schooling include keeping the
students of brains charged, enhancing pace of learning, and providing time to accommodate
enrichment/remedial instruction. The cons include students not being able to get jobs and other
learning experiences, extracurricular schedule conflicts, and inconclusive academic benefits. The
purpose of Ayres writing this article was to provide both sides of the issue on whether or not to
have year round school. Ayres providing both sides to the issue eliminates bias, and gives a fair
chance to develop a stance based on both sides.
This source is very credible. The information was last updated on January 9, 2019, making this
one of my most current resources. The sponsor for the site is an organization called Vittana that
is known for giving reliable information on schools and companies. The website does not include
advertisements. Chrystal Ayers is a seasoned writer on education and has been the editor-in-chief
for the last five years at Vittana. Ayers cites several sources in her article. I would use this article
to get reliable facts and quotes that I can cite because of the many perspectives given from the
sources.

Boyd, Bryan. “Year-Round Education Program Guide.” Year-Round Education Program Guide -

Multitrack Year-Round Education (CA Dept of Education), 14 Aug. 2018,

www.cde.ca.gov/ls/fa/yr/guide.asp. Accessed 23 June. 2019

The “Year-Round Education Program Guide” from August of 2018, was written by Bryan Boyd
and the California Department of Education to provide a guide to show what a Year Round
Curriculum may look like in a school. The guide gives specific details about the costs, steps to
execute the program, and analysis of advantages and disadvantages. The purpose of the guide
was to provide California with a guide to year-round school. The guide is well written so people
can understand the logistics of establishing this curriculum. This source is very reliable because
it is coming from California Department of Education, and the website is a government website.
The guide was also updated August 2018 which shows the currency of the information provided.
I would use this website to provide statistics on year-round education to give my reader an
understanding and perspective from numbers and logistics.
Carter, Robin Lockett. "The Traditional School Calendar Can Continue to Work in the Future."

Year-Round Schools, edited by Adriane Ruggiero, Greenhaven Press, 2008,

http://link.galegroup.com.sinclair.ohionet.org. Accessed 30 June. 2019.

In the article, “Traditional School Calendar Can Continue to Work in the Future", Robin Lockett
Carter claims that changing the school calendar from a traditional one to a year-round schedule
will do little to raise achievement levels for students. Carter claims that Year-Round School
would cause an increase in utilities for the school, as well as higher pay for teachers and other
school employees. She claims that paying for 3 months salary for all school employees is not
cheap. She also says that it is important to have experiences from summer vacations, camps etc.
which will shape students and give them perspective. The purpose of Carter writing this article
was to address both the advantages and disadvantages associated with year-round school
calendars in hopes of showing that a calendar change is not the solution to a failing academic
program. Even though this source was created in 2008, it can still be considered reliable because
it provides information that is relevant for all eras. The author also includes quotes and
perspectives from educational leaders in her article. The article was also found from a
professional database. I would use this article in my research paper to give a perspective of as to
why year round school should not take place, and I would also include the perspective from
educational leaders in my article.

Gold, Kenneth. “Perspective | The Myth behind Summer Break.” The Washington Post, WP

Company, 4 Sept. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/09/04/myth-behind-

summer-break/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ccc3129d06a0. Accessed 23 June. 2019.

In the Washington Times article, “The myth behind summer break”, Kenneth Gold gives a
unique perspective about the history of the summer break and why year-round school was not
realistic in history. Gold gives a unique perspective on the reasons that summer break was
needed and promoted. Gold cites reasons such as needing the help of older children in the
agrarian communities in the 18th century. In the 19th century, Gold attributes the extension of
summer break resulted from a desire to standardize school calendars, as well as the need of
wealthy urban families and middle class families wanting to take weeks off in the summer to
travel/vacation. Finally, Gold also cites medical and popular beliefs that summer vacation was
an exercise of rejuvenation for a young child’s mind. Gold challenges the readers to steer away
from the idea that only agrarian needs forced a summer vacation, and to consider other reasons
why year-round school is met with opposition, such as demands for standardization and budget
problems.

This article is a perspective piece within a respectable newspaper. The author, Kenneth Gold,
serves as the Dean of Education at the College of Staten Island, which gives credibility to this
article since it is about education. The article gives a unique perspective about the history of
moving away from year-round school to having a 3 month summer break This article was written
so that people on both sides of the issue understand the historical challenges that pushed the
education system away from year-round schooling. The author feels that to debate this issue
requires a strong foundation on the true facts of history.

This article is recent which also adds the credibility of the source. Although the author does not
take a stance for or against year-round school, I can use the facts from this article towards the
background/history of year-round schooling. It can also serve as a source to areas of the research
paper on points to consider when pushing year-round schooling.

Huebner, Tracy A. “Year-Round Schooling.” Educational Leadership, no. 7, 2010, p. 83.

EBSCOhost, sinclair.ohionet.org:80/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com. Accessed 23

June. 2019.

The short article titled, “Year-Round Schooling”, in the journal, Educational Leadership, was
written by Tracy Huebner, and it researches the facts about year-round schooling. Huebner
covers the point that more and more school districts have either adapted year-round schooling or
considering the switch. Huebner describes many benefits to switching to year-round schooling
including, better academic achievement, beneficial to children hailing from low-income families,
and positive attitudes and experiences from families and teachers of schools that participate in
year-round schooling. Huebner stresses that summer learning loss can academically challenge
students, especially students from low-income households. Huebner also details in her article the
steps that schools should take for transitioning to year-round schooling. The steps include
considering different models of year-round schooling and opening a dialogue with educators and
families which are experienced in year-round schooling.

This article was written in 2010, so I would not use the statistics that is given in this paper, as it
is out-dated. However, this article is written like a research paper, and quotes sources for the
research facts that are relevant to the current issue of year-round schooling, such as research
about children’s academic benefits from year-round schooling. Also, Huebner is a Senior
Research Associate at WestEd, San Francisco, which gives credibility to her research on this
topic.
The research article swings heavily towards the benefits of year-round schooling so I could
include the points from this article on the argument for why year-round schools could be
considered beneficial. The research done on the effects of year-round schooling in children’s
academic achievement is especially intriguing, as there are not many sources that explain the
research.

Scott, Amy. “Oyler: Dramatic Turnaround in a Poverty-Stricken Community.” Amazon, 2015,

www.oylerdocumentary.com/. Accessed 23 June. 2019.

The documentary, “Oyler:Dramatic Turnaround in a Poverty-Stricken Community”, directed by

Amy Scott, discusses the struggles that the Oyler school district goes through on a daily basis
because of poverty and trouble-making students. In the documentary, there is a segment where
leaders discuss how Year-Round school may be a possibility to slow down crimes and keep
standardized test scores higher by having students learn more in the summer. The school gets lots
of criticism from Ohio’s Department of Education because the test scores of the school are not
up to par. The purpose of this documentary was to inform how educational leaders in a school
about keeping students in check academically, and behaviorally inside and outside a school that
is poverty stricken. This documentary is very credible because it is high rating on Amazon, and
the documentary is all from first-person point of view. I would use this documentary in my
research paper to include how year round school could be beneficial in communities are poverty
stricken with high crime rates.

Wu, Amery D., and Jake E. Stone. “Does Year Round Schooling Affect the Outcome and

Growth of California’s API Scores?” Journal of Educational Research & Policy Studies,

vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2010, pp.79–97. EBSCOhost,

sinclair.ohionet.org:80/login?url=https:// search.ebscohost.com. Accessed 23 June. 2019.

The research article, “Does Year Round Schooling Affect the Outcome and Growth of
California’s API Scores?”, co-authored by Wu and Stone, answers that question with statistics
derived from data from 4,569 schools. Wu and Stone give an extensive introduction to the
concept of year-round schooling. They also detail points on both sides of the debate on year-
round schooling. Wu and Stone, in their introduction also go into the details of multiple
statistical studies on year-round schooling and discuss their limitations. Limitations included not
considering socio-economic status, not using advanced and more integrated statistical analysis
techniques, and not studying the data over time. Using more advanced statistical techniques, the
authors study whether year-round schools have an effect upon elementary schools Academic
Performance (API) scores and the growth in API scores, while considering performance and
demographic variables. They conclude that students who attend year-round schools do not have
significantly better API scores or growth in API scores.

This study, although published in 2010, is a reliable research paper that studied thousands of
schools and considered multiple variables in their analyses. The goal of the authors was to
provide a reliable statistical analyses about year-round school as many policy makers were
ignoring previous studies because of flawed statistics. The research article references many other
good articles and both Wu and Stone seem to have done a thorough background study. Also, the
fact that Wu and Stone are professors are recognized universities, gives credibility to their study.

I can use this article in my research paper to use statistics to show that year-round school does
not necessarily improve academic achievement. Even though I did not understand all the
methodology of the statistics, I understood the reasoning and the benefits of the study, which can
be communicated in the research paper towards the points about year-round schooling.