WRITING PROMPT The traditional school calendar has students attending school from late August until May followed by a lengthy 2
to 3 month summer break. The school board has been debating on whether or not to bring year-round schooling to your school district. Write an essay to your school board in which you take a position on whether or not schools should use the year-round schooling schedule. Use information from the “Year-Round Schooling” passage set to support your position.Manage your time carefully so that you can • read the passages • plan and organize your ideas Be sure to Write a clear central claim and two supporting claims• find at least two pieces of text-based evidence for each supporting claim • avoid overly relying on one source. Plan and write your response on the graphic organizer provided. YOU ARE NOT BEING ASKED TO WRITE A COMPLETE ESSAY FOR THIS ASSESSMENT.Total Score: _____/10Student Name:__________________________________________Language Arts Teacher: __________________________________Language Arts Period: ___________________________________
Source 1: Year-Round Schooling ExplainedByJaclyn Zubrzycki1. At more than 3,000 schools around the country, students are not out for the summer. Year-round schooling, in which a single summer break is swapped out for a series of shorter breaks throughout the year, has become increasingly common, both as an academic improvement strategy and as a solution to overcrowding.2. Year-round schooling is not necessarily the same as expanded learning time, which entails lengthening school days or the school year. Many year-round schools simply reorganize the standard 180-day school year.3. Year-round education is sometimes introduced as an academic and scheduling cure-all. Supporters of year-round schooling often describe the traditional school year as outdated, based on a farming, or agrarian, calenda and is not suited to modern society’s needs or structure.4. The academic argument for year-round school centers around preventing summer learning loss that occurs when students are out of school for extended periods of time. Others argue that year-round schedules can enrich students’ educational experiences by allowing for the addition of intersessions or creative courses.5. In other school systems—primarily those looking to avoid overcrowded classrooms—schools and districts organize students into different tracks in order to maximize the use of building space.6. In both cases, advocates often point to side benefits of having a school open year-round. In an era when schools are often hubs for health care, child-care,
and other services, year-round schools have the added benefit of allowing access to such services to continue throughout the calendar year. Some also argue that offering more regular breaks prevents burnout of both teachers and students. 7. A major argument against year-round schooling as an academic intervention is basically: “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” Since research is mixed as to whether or not year-round schooling actually helps students, it’s not worth making that drastic a change. 8. Others cite the financial toll involved in switching the calendar. Tourism and other industries that count on summer vacationers might suffer. High schoolers might be less able to get summer jobs. And the transition can bring added costs to school districts, which have to pay for utilities in buildings, payment for teachers, or other associated expenses.9. Still others argue that year-round schooling burdens parents and takes away from students’ time to experience anything outside of the classroom and reduces teachers’ time for professional development and growth. In districts where some schools are year-round and others are traditional, families may have to juggle conflicting schedules.Source 2: Benefits of Year-Round School10. A year-round school is set up to operate without a lengthy summer or fall break like traditional schools. Many states are setting up their school systems with this option available to students. There are some benefits of having year-round schools in comparison to traditional school calendars.11. Parents, teachers and students need to be able to focus on children learning as much as they can from school. Year-round schools help minimize summer
learning loss by having students attend school throughout the year without a three-month long vacation in the summer. This type of schedule also helps parents who are faced with having to find adequate and age appropriate childcare during these three months. The alternative is that parents have to take three months off of work to be able to care for their children at home. In a year-round schedule, the breaks are typically two or three weeks instead of a month or more. Many of the vacation periods are during traditional holidays and the days needed for childcare would be covered by employee holiday schedules
