Buck said:
Let's not give credit where none is due.
1. Year-round school is not a new idea.
2. Discussion about the need and means to improve public education has been nonstop during my lifetime.
My nephew attends a year-round school. My stepsister is convinced it's "better" than the others in the district due to test scores, but I keep pointing out that its very nature as a parent-choice school means it has more actively involved parents, which is the #1 factor in student success.
The schools in suburban areas haven't hit on a magic formula that rural and urban schools haven't hit on. Private schools aren't miles better than their neighbors because of their instructional practices. Homeschooling isn't the fast-track to being a Rhodes Scholar James Dobson claims it is.
The reason school reform efforts often never work (and there's always new ones) is because they're misguided. When kids fail, the SCHOOL gets blamed. It's a blame-shifting game. It's no secret that the most-motivated students come from families where education is important, and the least-motivated come from families where they are not pushed by their parents, read to at home, et al, and are inclined to see school as a waste of time.
It is due to our egalitarian nature that we give everyone a chance, but the problem is, we expect the same results out of everybody. That will never happen. In nations where the education is allegedly stronger than it is in the U.S., the onus of accountability is on the STUDENT. If the student passes, the student is praised. If the student fails, the student is shamed, gets a worse job, gets stuck in a worse secondary school, et al. There is no blaming the school -- the instruction is generally believed to be similar across the board. Our culture is one of making sure Jimmy and Julie have their self-esteem stroked all the time, so if they come home with a 0.9 GPA, the school must not be teaching them hard enough. Never mind that Jimmy hasn't turned in a homework assignment since the new version of Call of Duty came out, or Julie spends all of her waking hours at her boyfriend's house, where they're doing anything but studying.
That's why school reform efforts won't work.
And, as long as I'm working 180 days, I could really care less when they are.