The Politics & Marketing
of Year-Round School
By Billee A. Bussard 
( November 18, 2009 - AUTHOR'S NOTE: This paper was presented to the Florida Political Science Association in March 2003 as then Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was threatening to place Florida schools on a year-round calendar. The author has decided to make this research  public because of the misguided efforts  by President Obama's Education Secretary to use calendar change as a means to improve education outcomes. As this paper documents, 100 years of experimenting shows using a year-round school calendar provides no significant educational  or economic benefit. Paragraphs highlighted in red provide particularly insightful information that should be helpful to school officials who will be pressured to consider school calendar change and media looking at this issue. The author is aware that some of the links to references may no longer be available on the Internet, but  be assured they were available at the time this paper was written as part of an independent study under the guidance of  Dr. Henry Thomas, then Political Science Department chair at the University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL. An updated version of this paper  is in progress will be produced sometime in 2010. )

This paper is copyrighted, and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission of the author. The paper and its contents may, however, be cited. Some of the research in this paper will be published in a future book.  Send inquiries to bussardre@aol.com or call (904) 249-2468.

1. Introduction/Overview
     Public school financial problems will be exacerbated and education quality will be compromised if Florida policymakers use a year-round calendar, as Gov. Jeb Bush has  proposed,  to respond to voter mandates passed November 2002 for class size reduction and expanded preschool. Ample evidence for this conclusion is found in academic research, media accounts, and lawsuits now working their way through the courts.
     School calendar reconfiguration has been marketed to policymakers for 100 years as the most cost-efficient means of using and expanding school building space. Year-round school is also pitched as an academic remedy.  But these claims run counter to experiences across the nation—especially during the last 30 years—and especially with the multi-track year-round school calendar.
     The multi-track year-round calendar expands school building capacity by placing children in the same school on different schedules and rotating a segment of the student body out of classrooms to make room for a segment returning from vacation. The 10- to 12-week summer break of the typical 180-day traditional school year is replaced with shorter, more frequent breaks throughout the year and a short summer vacation.  School capacity can be extended up to 50 percent, depending on the calendar used. With some calendar plans, such as the Concept 6, a third of the students get no summer vacation break.[1] Children in the same families are sometimes assigned different vacation schedules.[2]  Some version of a year-round calendar is also used when school districts extend the traditional school year by two weeks or more.
     Post-election, Gov. Bush floated the multi-track year-round calendar as a possible response to the class size reduction amendment he strongly opposed,  then made it part of his final plan to address voter wishes.[3]   Rather than find money to build new classrooms, the governor made the year-round calendar one of the required options for districts that do not meet the two-per-year reduction in average class size beginning next year.[4]
     Meeting the mandates without funds to build new classrooms is expected to plunge many Florida school districts into a facilities crisis they have been teetering on for years due to decades of rapid population growth and school reform edicts that gobbled up classrooms. Just incorporating technology into the classroom, as commanded in 1983 in A Nation At Risk, [5] is estimated to consume as much as 25 percent of school facility space.[6]  “The size of the standard classroom needs to increase another 25 percent to incorporate new technology into everyday instruction,” Education Week reported in 1996,[7] citing a U.S. Government Accounting Office study.[8]
     While this paper focuses on the multi-track calendar proposed by Gov. Bush, it also makes note of detriments common to both multi-track and single-track year-round calendars.
     Single-track year-round school keeps all students on the same vacation schedule but shortens the summer break and places children in classrooms in the hottest months of the year.  Implementation of a single-track calendar often precedes an incremental implementation of a multi-track calendar in many school districts faced with rapid growth and fund shortages.  Single-track calendars are marketed under a dozen various labels, among them: modified calendar, balanced calendar, flexible calendar, and continuous learning calendar.
     A consistent complaint in media, school district and research reports[9] from around the country is that a year-round calendar—both the multi-track and single-track versions—narrows the window of opportunity for busy, modern-day families to schedule vacations together.
     Thomas Payne, as director of  year-round education for the California Department of Education, said the year-round calendar “has the potential to break the family apart.” [10] 
     This paper examines the politics and marketing of the year-round calendar that swayed so many business and political leaders in the 20^th century, including Florida’s policymakers, that school calendar reconfiguration was prudent public policy.  In doing so, this paper:

·        Provides a brief summary of evidence that counters claims of the year-round calendar’s academic, financial and other benefits.

·        Visits the year-round school experience in California, which has housed the lion’s share of the nation’s year-round schools for decades.[11]  

·        Provides an overview of the history of the year-round school movement and circumstances leading to its revival in early 1970.

·        Contrasts the rhetoric and reality of year-round school experiments and other information cited in federal, state and other reports produced over the last 30 years.

·        A brief review of the political constituency that supports or profits from a reconfigured school year is discussed in the concluding remarks.

     This research with its retrospective look at the year-round school movement should give policymakers in the 21^st century pause about adopting a school facilities and education reform whose origins date back to horse-and-buggy days. 

1.1 - Mounting Evidence Against Year-Round School Calendar

     Some of the most recent and most dramatic evidence of the failure of the multi-track year-round calendar as a public policy can be found in the closely watched Williams v. California education inequity lawsuit still working its way through California courts in 2003.[12]  Testimony filed in that case documents how the multi-track year-round calendar compounds school education delivery and other public policy problems, and serves to further segregate public schools.[13]
     Florida already has a serious school segregation problem. The state is identified as the 9^th most segregated state for Hispanic and the 20^th most segregated for black students in a report by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University that examined racial mix of U.S. schools in 2000. The state has gone backward. Segregation in Florida schools today mirrors conditions 30 years ago.[14]
     Even academics who are advocates of year-round school warn that “implementing a [multi-track year-round calendar] may result in . . . ghettoization of specific student [or teacher] groups on separate tracks.”[15]

1.2 -  Evidence of Higher Costs of  the Year-Round Calendar

     As to costs, researchers from the only university-based consortium studying the year-round calendar reported that only under ideal circumstances and with exceptional management could the multi-track calendar deliver any savings. Too many variables, from student mobility rate to teacher salary range, impact the financial outcome.[16] 
     Gene Glass, Arizona State University researcher concluded:

“Year-round schools are not the only, and are certainly not the least expensive, cost-cutting option for financially strapped, growing school districts. Cheaper measures include scheduling double sessions, and using temporary buildings. Redistributing the enrollment by busing and redrawing attendance boundaries can also relieve overcrowding.  Before choosing year-round operation, school districts might also consider leasing space or services from neighboring districts or expanding existing buildings.” [17]

     Fluxuating energy costs add to complexities of  a year-round calendar.  The uncertain costs to cool school buildings in the summer during an era of heightened political tensions in oil-producing nations could cause additional budget crises for school districts. In February 2003, some of the nation’s largest utility suppliers were announcing “15 - 20 percent” rate hikes.[18] A Texas study by the Comptroller of Public Accounts found that calendar reconfiguration jumped the electric bills in some school districts as much as $10 million a year. The report also determined the state lost $332 million in tourist revenue related to school calendar change.[19] 
     Many hidden costs are also incurred outside the school walls.  For instance, there are many libraries that traditionally stay open on Sundays during a conventional September to June school year, but close on Sundays to save money when school is out for the summer.[20]

1.3 -  Evidence of Academic Disappointments and Detriments
     Correlations between the year-round calendar and lower academic performance have been found many places throughout the nation, but especially in California. A study released in February 2001 by the California Teachers Association, Comparison of the Lowest Decile Schools to the Highest Decile Schools Under the Academic Performance Index, found:

·        58 percent of elementary schools scoring in the lowest decile on achievement tests were year-round schools compared to just 3 percent of the highest decile schools.

·        33 percent of middle schools scoring in the lowest decile were year-round schools compared to just 1 percent of the highest decile schools.

·        34 percent of high schools in the lowest decile were year-round schools while no year-round schools were in the highest decile.[21]

     Testimony in the Williams lawsuit, discussed later in this paper, shows children on a multi-track calendar that places them in school in the hottest part of the year have the poorest academic record of the five tracks, while the track with a longer summer break that most resembles a traditional school year produces the highest test scores.  The single-track year-round calendar also forces children to attend classes in the hottest months of the year.

1.4 -  Health, Safety, Crime and  the Year-Round Calendar

     Children on the year-round calendar face greater health risks, according to a citizens’ report to the Fresno Unified School District in California.  Sending children to school in August, when temperatures are the highest and air quality the poorest, poses long-term health consequences to youngsters whose lungs are still developing, and particularly creates problems for those with allergies and asthma, the report says, using information from the Environmental Protection Agency, the American Lung Association, The National Weather Service and the San Joaquin Air Pollution control District. [22] 
     Correlations between the year-round calendar and a rise in gang activity and juvenile crime have been made. Though the information is anecdotal, it should raise concerns.  Officials with the largest gang monitoring agency in the nation in Los Angeles, which for three decades has been the nation’s largest year-round school district, note a parallel rise between the growth of gangs in that city and the growth of year-round schools.  A citizens’ report presented Nov. 18, 1993 to the Florida Facilities Task Force along with a petition against year-round school signed by hundreds of Florida parents from across the state[23] provides some chilling information from Ed Turley, deputy director of Community Youth and Gang Services, a group that works with 42 Los Angeles schools to prevent gang activity.
     “We’re very concerned with the impact of the track system,” Turley said. “I’m sure if there were a study done, it would show it was a contributing factor to the development of gangs and the increase in gang violence.”  The summary of the interview with Turley says:

“Growth of gangs in LA mushroomed in the early 1970s, coincidentally, around the time year-round schools were implemented…Recruitment of gang members begins as young as 3^rd and 4^th grade, Turley said. Because of the year-round schedule, identifying truant children in LA is a problem….Malls have become hangouts for many latchkey children and teenagers.  During one [school] break early last year (1992), hundreds of youngsters wandering one mall suddenly broke into a frenzy, looting stores and smashing windows.”[24]

     That the frequent breaks of the year-round school create day care problems for working parents, especially the working poor, is frequently cited in news accounts.  The year-round calendar can exacerbate the already serious problem of latchkey children.[25]

1.5 - Even President Bush Knows Year-Round School Is Bad Public Policy
     One of the most dramatic retreats in the nation from the year-round calendar occurred in Texas, when the governor’s brother, President George W. Bush, was chief executive of the Lone Star State.[26]  Year-round school enrollment mushroomed from 95,000 children in 58 school districts in 1993-94, when Bush became Texas governor, then peaked to 188,000 students in 61 school districts by the 1997-98 school year and plunged to just 63,000 children in 35 Texas school districts by the time he headed for the White House.[27] 
     Just last month (February 2003), the contract for the privately managed Edison Schools in Texas was terminated in a 6-0 vote by the Tyler Independent School District.  Edison had been operating the school since 1999 on a version of a year-round calendar using a single-track extended school year and extended school day.[28]
     After four years, school Superintendent Dr. David Simons concluded:  “The district was not getting enough academic bang for its buck,” the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported.  “When you look at the bottom line in terms of the results versus investment, I didn’t think our district had got what it paid for,” Simons said.[29]
     The students at Stewart-Edison Junior Academy “ranked next to last among the six Tyler ISD middle schools in passing rates on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills.” It cost

YEAR-ROUND EDUCATION IN TEXAS

$454,898 more to operate the school, most of  those costs related to operating on a year-round, extended school year, and at least half of those for additional staff costs. Some of the high costs were also attributed to profits for the for-profit management company.[30]
     Stewart Middle School is the last Texas district to sever ties with Edison, following Dallas, San Antonio and Sherman school districts.  Edison’s approach used most of the recommendations to improve education performance prescribed in government reports generated in the 1980s and 1990s, including school calendar reconfiguration.[31]

1.6 Other Motivations Behind Year-Round School Proposal?
     Gov. Bush’s year-round school proposal is puzzling unless, of course, he is, as critics claim, trying to punish voters for demanding smaller classes.[32] 
     Or, another possibility is this is a move to accomplish some unfinished goal of another Bush family member.
     Interestingly, former President George H.W. Bush encouraged year-round school growth in the 1990s. His newly appointed education Secretary, Lamar Alexander, who drafted his America 2000 package of school reforms, added a longer school year to the list of recommendations that emerged from the Charlottesville Education Summit in 1989.[33]
     The Bush initiative opened new doors for long-time promoters of year-round education, especially members of the San Diego, California-based National Association For Year-Round Education.  James C. Bradford Jr,. a NAYRE ex officio, told the National School Boards Association convention in March 1993:
     “Year-round education is a national issue.  President George Bush chose Mr. Jefferson’s home in Virginia as the place to introduce his Education Agenda. One of his initiatives includes voluntary extended school programs in every school district in America.”[34] 
     Bradford, superintendent of Buena Vista City, Va., Public Schools, said the voluntary quarter system in his high school of about 350 students had been described as a “high school model for the nation.” [35] 
     But historians of summer programs note that voluntary programs, including year-round school programs, have been abandoned because of low participation in the summer session, which negates or minimizes savings potential.  Paul Bell, the deputy superintendent of  Dade County’s “quinmester” year-round program used in the 1960s and ‘70s and later abandoned, summarized the lesson  Dade County learned the hard way about year-round education:

“The voluntary nature of a year-round program is necessary for public acceptance, but if a year-round program remains only voluntary, then it cannot meet its goal of cost-effectiveness.” [36]

     At a time when politicians are stressing the need for choice in schools, multi-track year-round calendar for financial reasons must deny parents choice. In 1993, when Los Angeles parents and faculty were given a choice  between staying on a multi-track calendar so all children in the district would be on the same calendar or returning to a traditional calendar,  they resoundingly voted out the multi-track calendar in 543 of the 544  schools.[37]  No choice was provided in another 200 multi-track year-round schools because of overcrowding.  Evidence of the immense unpopularity of year-round school throughout the United States can be found in a year-round school “Reject List” of hundreds of school districts on the Internet.[38]
     Even the Buena Vista “model high school” after 20 years using a year-round calendar attracted only slightly more than half its students to summer classes for enrichment, remediation or acceleration.[39]  Among the specific objectives of the year-round program, begun in 1974, was “To provide a meaningful summer program for students below the legal age to work in the local industries.”
     The senior Bush also appointed a year-round school proponent as his education secretary. Lamar Alexander was chairman of the 1986 National Governors’ Association report, Time For Results, which concluded a year-round calendar would be a more effective and economic way to educate children.[40]
     Astoundingly, a document that was to serve as a policy guide for the nation’s schools in the coming decade—which included switching schools nationwide to a year-round calendar—was never debated, discussed or voted on by the National Governors as a group, as this paper details elsewhere.  The chairman of the National Governors’ facilities task force that incorporated the recommendation for year-round school admits calendar change advocates did a masterful job of marketing the idea, as is reported in a special edition of a quarterly newsletter by the National Association For Year-Round Education.
     Year-round school is also promoted as the schedule that best fits the “learning a living” and “work place competencies” [41] outlined in controversial U.S. Department of Labor  reports issued  by the  Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills when the senior Bush was president.
     William D. White, who became a NAYRE consultant[42] after retiring in 1987 as a central office administrator in Jefferson County, Colorado, (where the year-round calendar was dropped after many years) argues in a paper dated February 1994 that a year-round calendar is an integral component for successful school-to-work programs.

“Apprenticeships are a key feature of the reform plan of the present administration in Washington to revitalize the high school education of America’s youth and make it more relevant to the needs of the nation’s economy. Cooperative education works best when students working to master skills on the job see the practical application of knowledge gained in the classroom.  But the student’s time must be divided to allow them total immersion into the tasks of the work site on a full day schedule.  Year-round scheduling permits terms of full day work experience to be interspersed between terms of full day classroom instruction.”[43]

“The Carnegie Council on Policy Studies (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1979, ch. 6) suggests in their report Giving Youth a Better Chance, that America’s high schools should operate year-round in order to be fully restructured and give youth the opportunities to experience ‘education for work and work as education.’ One of their conclusions was that ‘in many ways, a work experience program could be more effectively developed in a school that operates year-round.’  They go on to suggest that Federal Funds should be released to year-round schools to pay the costs for work site visits by the high school’s vocational teacher-coordinators and to fund the need for year-round vocational counseling and job placement.”[44]

     Though receiving support for two decades from the most powerful bully pulpit in the nation, from some of the most influential policy groups in the nation, from business roundtables and from some of the most powerful business and political leaders in Republican and Democrat parties, year-round school has hovered around only 3% of the nation’s total public school enrollment. Private schools have been very slow to adopt the year-round calendar. Only 74 across the nation were year-round schools in the 2001-02 school year.[45] Florida had just one using a year-round schedule in the 2001-02 school year.[46]  (Gov. Bush is also proposing a school voucher program to relieve class-size reduction overcrowding.)[47] 
     Florida learned its lesson the hard way about year-round calendars twice already in experiments abandoned in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1989, there were only 8 year-round schools in the state, 7 in Palm Beach County and 1 in Marion County[48]—districts that later returned those schools to a traditional school year.  In the 6 years between 1995 and 2001, Florida went from a peak of 166 year-round schools with 145,000 children to just 39 with 29,783 students, according to NAYRE’s own calculations.[49]  Versions of a year-round calendar used in some Florida schools in the 1960s and 1970s also proved impractical and were abandoned.[50] 
     Florida policymakers who don’t learn from this history of school calendar reform are doomed to repeat it, and taxpayers and their children are doomed to pay a high price for their ignorance.

2. California’s Experience with multi-track year-round school
     California’s experience with the year-round calendar should serve as a red flag for policymakers in Florida and across the nation.
     California, home to the San Diego-based National Association For Year-Round Education advocacy organization, has been the tail that has wagged the dog of the year-round school movement.  The Pacific Coast state housed the lion’s share of the nation’s multi-track year-round schools during the last three decades of the 20^th century and continues to do so in the first three years of the 21^st . [51]
     The wide use of multi-track year-round calendar in the state is attributed to “the state’s primary interest in…its potential for reducing school districts’ demands for limited state resources to construct new school facilities.” [52]  But even in a state where strong anti-tax sentiment led to the passage of the landmark, property tax-capping Proposition 13, and public policy that encouraged the use of a year-round calendar instead of building new schools,[53]  support for year-round school has wavered.

enrollment experienced a phenomenal 83% jump in the 1991-92 school year, nearly 70 percent of the increase was due to a decision by the Los Angeles School Board to put the entire school district on a year-round calendar.[62]
     In the 1992-93 school year, year-round school advocates got a lot of mileage in the press –and with school districts—using enrollment numbers to create a perception that the traditional school year was based on outdated “agrarian” calendar and that its days were numbered.  But in fact, California that year claimed 83 percent of the entire nation’s 1,574,385 year-round school students.[63]
     Those year-round school district numbers nearly tripled in California in the 5 years subsequent to the release of the National Governors’ report in 1986. But in early 1990, there were clear signs in California that the year-round calendar was not fulfilling promises of academic benefit and cost-savings, and was complicating family life.
      “Even the state Department of Education, California’s most enthusiastic proponent of year-round schooling, considers many of the claims about it [year-round school] to be inflated,” according to an April 10, 1991 San Francisco Chronicle story by Nanette Asimov headed “Report Card on Year-Round Schools.” The Chronicle reported:

      “Educators are beginning to question the wisdom of the move [to a year-round calendar]. They now recognize that going to year-round schools is only a temporary solution to school overcrowding.  In addition, teachers who believed that year-round schools would improve academic performance now realize that the new calendar benefits only a small percentage of students. . . .

“In fact, many educators believe that year-round calendars can present a host of other problems, from separation of families to segregation of students. Some say that year-round students are also at a disadvantage when taking the state tests.”[64]

     A study by Floraline Stevens for the Los Angeles Unified School District found the alternative calendar “is not a program for academic achievement,” and that test scores  for students in year-round schools remained below district average.[65]
     The unfulfilled promises of year-round school in Los Angeles were mirrored across the state, Asimov wrote, including in Hayward Park Elementary School, which in 1968 became California’s first year-round school.  In 1991, “basic test scores are lower than they were five years ago and fall below the state average in reading, writing and arithmetic,” Asimov found.
     The year-round calendar also failed to offset “summer learning loss,” which has been a main selling point of year-round school by its promoters. Teachers, including Zoe Dean at Oakland’s Allendale Year-Round School, told Asimov that  year-round students still  forgot studies during the shorter mid-year vacation breaks and still required review time.[66] Other findings in the Asimov report:

·        While year-round school relieved serious overcrowding in California and elsewhere “educators are coming to believe that the calendar shift may just mean postponing the inevitable need to build more schools.”

·        Districts find it expensive to offer specialty classes, such as honors and bilingual classes. “Consequentially many students are assigned to staggered schedules based on academic ability or English fluency, prompting parents to accuse school officials of segregation.”
     Interestingly, the Asimov report is absent as a resource citation in federal and state government reports, and other quasi-government reports that were being written in the 1990s, which will be discussed and examined later in this paper.
     NAYRE representatives warn prospective districts against looking too closely at the facts. Patrick McDaniel, as president of  NAYRE, offered the following advice:

“Some opponents to year-round education voice their arguments on a strictly rational level: Year-round education is too expensive, it hasn't been proven, it has more disadvantages than advantages, it's not worth the sacrifice.  While these arguments have validity in their own terms, they tend to be one-sided.
Furthermore, discussion with one of the ‘rational’ opponents to year-round education usually reveals that no accumulation of facts or arguments on behalf of year-round education penetrate the wall of opposition. It is important not to argue with ‘rational’ opponents to year-round education on the basis of facts, because at bottom their reservations are ideological and based on values, even though they will bolster their position with

‘the facts.’ ”[67]

2.3 A Grand Jury Questions Effects of Year-Round Calendar On Testing
     In 2001, when the Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury looked at year-round schools, it found a huge gap in test scores between multi-track schools and traditional calendar schools. (See accompanying chart on the Stat 9 test scores of 28 elementary, 3 middle and 3 high schools examined by the Los Angeles grand jury.) The test score disparity prompted a recommendation for an investigation to determine if the multi-track calendar was the culprit, as teachers and principals suggested.
     “There seems to be considerable differences between the Year-Round school system, at the elementary school level, and the Traditional school system….Most of the year-round schools are found in the lower income communities.  These schools, although they have plenty of budget money for instruction, thanks to Title 1 and Bilingual funding, have the highest percentage of teachers who have less then five years of teaching experience.  …The children who attend the year-round schools have considerably low Stat 9 scores.”[68]

     The jurors recognized multiple factors contributed to lower scores but suspected, based on discussions with educators in those schools, that scheduling features of the multi-track calendar were a common factor in the poor performance on the tests.[69]

2.4  The Williams v. California Lawsuit & the Multi-track Education Inequities

The most dramatic and detailed case against the year-round calendar to date is the Williams v. California lawsuit that is winding its way through the courts. The Williams case, brought by the Mexican American Legal Defense Education Fund and other civil rights groups, charges that the state’s education funding system creates education inequities that are disproportionately imposed on minorities, and names among those education inequities the “academically damaging multi-track year-round calendars.” [70] 
     All children placed on multi-track schedules do less well than children in traditional calendar schools or even single-track year-round schools, but the Concept 6 children perform the worst, education researcher Ross Mitchell testified.[71]
     Mitchell, in his sworn testimony,  said the state acknowledged the educational inferiority of the multi-track calendar when it made allowances in the State’s Academic Performance Index for schools using a multi-track calendar.

 “State policy designates the multi-track year-round calendar as an indicator of academic performance risk (i.e., it is expected to have a negative impact on achievement.  In other words, after accounting for differences in the distribution of individual student and family characteristics, as well as teacher qualifications, between multi-track-year round calendar and traditional/single-track year-round calendar schools, the multi-track year-round calendar is independently associated with an additional achievement penalty.” [72]

     Mitchell’s statewide analysis of year-round schools found greatest gaps in achievement between traditional calendar/single track schools and the Concept 6 multi-track calendar.  But even schools with multi-track calendar versions other than the Concept 6 did not perform as well as traditional/single track groups.[73] 
 
     Mitchell testifies that multi-track year-round schools: 
1) Segregate students by socio-economic and racial groups.
     “Multi-track year-round schools in California, especially concept 6 schools, have much greater than their representative share of Hispanic, NSLP

·      [low income] eligible, and ELL [English limited] students compared to traditional and single-track year-round schools.”

·      “Racial or ethnic group membership is strongly aligned with the type of calendar. . . . This is quite striking for Hispanic students attending schools using a multi-track calendar, especially those attending schools using a Concept 6 calendar.”[74]

·      “There are also clear racial or ethnic group, family income, and ELL status differences among students across attendance tracks within multi-track year-round schools.”[75]

2) Create academic inequities. 

·      “The achievement gap between schools utilizing the various attendance calendars is quite large. Traditional/single-track schools are the best off and the Concept 6 schools are worst off.”[76]

·       “Multi-track year-round schools remain less likely to be ranked as highly on the State’s Academic Performance Index (API) as traditional/single-track schools even after statistically controlling for the dramatic systematic  differences observed.”[77]

·      There is documented “segregation of students and teachers by attendance track on a multi-track year-round calendar. The pattern of segmentation placed the students with greatest education need on tracks with the least experienced teachers, while the most experienced teachers were with the highest performing students.”[78]

·      “The division of the student body into subsets, typically three or four, depending on the number of attendance tracks, makes it difficult to assign students uniformly to classrooms with a single grade curriculum.  Combination grade classes are frequently required in multi-track year-round schools.  The consequence of combination grade classes is lowered overall student achievement and difficulty in maintaining teacher morale.”[79]

3) Result in unequal educational opportunities within the multi-track schools. 

·      “There are achievement gaps between attendance tracks within multi-track year-round schools, which are not fully accounted for by differences between the groups of students and teachers allocated to the various tracks.[80]

·      [places] students in school during the hottest months of the year –June through August.”[82] 

·      “The most popular tracks, most like the traditional calendar, have the highest achieving students, while the least popular tracks have the lowest achieving students.”[83]  The best academic performances in multi-track schools, in three-track or four track  models, were on the schedule that most resembled the traditional calendar school year, while the worst achievement scores were for students assigned to the “B” track.[84]

·      “Teacher experience levels, which are correlated with teacher credential status, are also far from equally distributed across tracks within multi-track year-round schools.”[85]

4) Offer no guarantees of cost savings.

“Though there are a variety of substantiated claims for reduced overall costs associated with implementation of the multi-track year-round calendar, not all sites or districts realize cost savings.”[86]

     In short, using Mitchell’s testimony,  “The utilization of the multi-track year-round calendar in California schools results in unequal educational opportunities for some, if not all, students in these schools compared to students who attend traditional/single-track year-round schools.  The greatest disparity is for those students attending Concept 6 calendar multi-track year-round schools.”[87]

  2.5 A Pay- Later-Pay-More Public Policy

     Today, California taxpayers, and especially their children, are paying a heavy price because policymakers tried to use a BandAid  approach to school overcrowding.  California now faces costly court cases and a staggering bill to meet school housing needs.
     In Los Angles alone “It would take at least $6 billion to get all students off  both the buses and the district’s educationally perverted year-round schedule.”[88] Furthermore, the learning environment in the Los Angeles school district declined steadily when schools switched to a multi-track calendar, according to the Williams lawsuit and a LA Weekly report. Workers cannot keep up with maintenance needs because of funding shortages and  because school buildings are always occupied. Classrooms with  peeling paint, mold and ceilings caving in are not uncommon. Wear and tear on school building heating and

air-conditioning from constant use leaves classrooms either too cold or too hot.[89] This unhealthy environment is compounded by infestations of roaches and rats.[90]

     The demonstrated decline in school environment and education quality that accompanied the multi-track calendar in California schools provides important lessons for policymakers everywhere.  Professor Jean Oakes, a Williams lawsuit witness, testified:

“The complaints brought by plaintiffs in the Williams case—millions of California schoolchildren in schools with unqualified teachers, materials shortages, and unclean and unsafe facilities—provide evidence about the terrible consequences of the State’s systematic failures.  These are consequences that the State’s current policymaking compliance and accountability systems do not prevent, detect, and correct.  In many cases, those systems have exacerbated the problems.[91] …Given the negative effect of overcrowded facilities and of the year-round, multi-track schedules that districts use to relieve overcrowding, the State should prohibit the assignment of any child to overcrowded schools or to schools employing Concept 6 year-round education plan. Finally, the State should require that all students be assigned to a well-maintained, uncrowded school facility within reasonable commuting  distance from home.”[92]

     Furthermore, the facilities crisis has contributed to high dropout rates, and inaction to address them, the LAWeekly report says.  “District officials have made only half-hearted attempts to prevent students from dropping out—because there’s no room for these students anyway.” [93]
     Summarizing the sworn testimony of assistant Superintendent Gordon Wohlers,  who was deposed in the MALDEF lawsuit, the LA Weekly wrote that Wohlers was forced to concede Los Angeles school policymakers for years “have, in effect, perpetuated a fraud on the children of Los Angeles. Year-round education is not, in fact, a swell way to keep kids learning all year, as district officials originally claimed. Instead, the schedule as practiced here, has hurt students badly, declares Wohlers.”[94]
     The problem-plagued Los Angeles Unified School District is also a case study in how state policy in support of a multi-track year-round calendar can compound problems for local communities, particularly urban areas. Efforts to buy lands to build schools in urban

centers are often thwarted by well-connected business interests who want to rescue those areas with large industrial development projects.[95]

“Most of the time, the path of least resistance was to build no school at all. Instead, officials changed school calendar to year-round, stuck students on busses and chopped up playgrounds by slapping down portables.  The resulting mega-campuses –elementary schools with 2,000 students—were no one’s idea of a good setting for education, but they were politically acceptable.  Of course, such stratagems drove away middle-class families—they could afford to move, or used private schools—but then, L.A. Unified had little space for these students anyway.”[96]

3. Origin and History of the  Year-Round School Movement
     Year-round schooling has a long history in the United States, dating back to the 1800s, when it was used sporadically in northern industrial cities in an attempt to address the English instruction needs of the children of immigrants.  By the turn of the century, year-round schooling was being embraced as an answer to many of the same problems that plague schools today: Overcrowding, funding shortages, and improving the education process.[97]
     Calendar reconfigurations also figured in workforce training school reforms initiated in the early 1900s as they did in initiatives drafted in the late 1900s that are blueprints many schools are following in 2000.
     Kenneth Gold’s scholarly review of the origin and history of summer learning found year-round schools were an outgrowth of vacation schools, which were:

 “created in part to prepare students for industrial jobs.  What economists now call human capital formation—the development of knowledge skills and habits of workers to make them more productive—was an integral piece of the vacation school purpose and program.”[98]

six years in cities—including Nashville, Newark and Omaha—with vacation school programs, then evolved into experiments with a 12-month school year.[99]

Other researchers note that most of the year-round school plans of the first quarter of the 20^th century were “mandatory quarter systems.” They were “adopted primarily to assist the language and cultural assimilation of the foreign-born immigrants, provide needed space for rapidly expanding student populations, and accelerate the movement of students through the grades to enable them to enter the workforce sooner.”[100]

All-year school was also viewed in the early 1900s as a means to limit idle time of children and counter the negative effects of growing up in an urban environment.  Arguments used for year-round schools in 1937 by William Wirt, who pioneered the first year-round school in Bluffton, and  later in Gary, Indiana, echo those heard in the 1960s and 1970s, an era of urban unrest and violence.  Wirt wrote:

“We have given the city boy the street and alley for his school and it has been more efficient in educating him in the wrong direction through gang activities. What we need to do is to eliminate this street time from the lives of children. We must substitute wholesome work and play for loafing and dangerous play on city streets. Much of the good work that is now being done during the time in schools is being undone in the five hours in the streets and alleys.”[101]

By the 1930s, however, the number of year-round schools was declining, as federal programs began to offer support for school construction and a declining birthrate began to alleviate the pressures of overcrowding.[102] A research report on the year-round calendar by the Nation Education Association in 1958 found that every school system that had attempted a 12-month calendar up to that point eventually abandoned it.[103]

3.1 The Year-Round School Renaissance

The anti-tax sentiments of the late 1960s and early 1970s created a climate for the year-round school movement to flourish. In 1973, John McLain, a founder of the year-round school advocacy group that emerged subsequent to the Valley View experiment, wrote:

 “The greatest single force propelling the current all-year school movement is the desire of many taxpayers to save money by reducing the size of a new school, or by avoiding adding to an old one.”[105]

Circumstances in 1970 that shaped the decision in the Valley View, Illinois school district to address school facility needs with a year-round calendar are similar to the dilemma Florida faces in 2003:[106] Bonding power to build the number of new schools needed had been exhausted, rapid growth taxed school buildings to capacity, and kindergarten had been made mandatory.[107]  Compulsory kindergarten law passed in spring 1968 was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for the Valley View board, and forced it to seriously consider calendar plans that would provide 20 additional kindergarten classrooms it needed by fall 1970.[108] 

A critical moment in the rebirth of the year-round school movement was the signing June 29, 1970, by Republican Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie of year-round school enabling laws in ceremonies in Valley View that received state and national attention.[109]  Valley View school officials Superintendent Kenneth L Hermansen and school board research and multi-media director James R. Gove write in their book detailing the events:

            “There is no doubt that 1970-71 is the school year in which the
            “great debate” over year-round education ended—the year in which
            action began, on a nationwide scale.[110]

The movement was born but the debate rages still across the country in 2003.

 Valley View’s grand and much-publicized experiment ended in 1980[113], nearly unnoticed by the nation’s media that had covered the novelty of an all-year school calendar with such fanfare. But the year-round school advocacy organization pushed on.

       The early success of the year-round school group can be attributed in large part to the media savvy of George M. Jensen, a Minneapolis Board of Education president who was a founder of the “industry-oriented” National School Calendar Study committee in Minneapolis that had been promoting school calendar change for years. “He… employed prolific public relations counsel, who has been successful in ‘planting’ articles on the economics of year-round school plans in a number of major periodicals, including Readers Digest, Saturday Review and Better Homes & Garden,”[114] Hermansen and Gove wrote in 1972.  (Jensen, however, was never able to sell the all-year calendar to his own Minneapolis school board.[115])  Reader’s Digest published an article in 1959 questioning the “lavish extravagance” of closing school buildings in the summer, and a similar article in 1966.

       The publicity was having an impact as noted by a Nation’s Schools survey in 1958 in which the number of superintendents favoring school calendar change had increased to 33 percent.[116]

       Public relations firms were also used in the Northville and Utica, Michigan schools districts in attempts to sell a four-quarter plan.[117] The Utica district compiled a list in 1970 of more than 400 articles on year-round school found in professional and business journals and in mainstream magazines.[118]  A South Carolina study group compiled a bibliography of some 800 books, articles and papers on year-round education between 1907 and 1972.[119]

Economic conditions were right for selling the year-round school concept in the 1970s.

does the voter ever get an opportunity to express his opposition to taxation: and the schools suffer.”[120]

3.2  Year-Round School Group Restructures

     By 1980, however, the NCYRE  “was … a faltering, broken organization,” a NAYRE official wrote in an annual report.[121]

     The 1980 San Francisco National Conference attracted just 150 people,[122] a financial disaster for the group whose coffers depended on turnout. In 1972, about 900 attended the conference in San Diego.[123]  In 1976, about 1,100 turned out for the “landmark”[124] weeklong conference in Long Beach, Calif., aboard the much-publicized Queen Mary cruise ship that had been converted into a tourist attraction and convention center.[125] 
     The January date of the Queen Mary conference in sunny California was no doubt an attraction for many school officials in snowbelt states. Attendance at a subsequent year-round school conference in a colder clime was poor.[126]  The Washington, D.C., conference the following year had a poor turnout, even though it was billed as the “first international seminar,” and received sponsorship from the U.S. Agency for International Development with the cooperation of Organization of American States.[127] 
     “Further, the National Council was bankrupt, thanks to not only the low conference enrollment, but more to the embezzlement of funds by the then executive director,” writes Don Glines, a NCYRE and NAYRE member who has written several books on the year round school movement.[128]
     “A hardy band of YRE advocates never wavered in their belief and support for the concept.” They even borrowed money to keep the group afloat.[129]

       Declining enrollment numbers did not discourage the faithful. "The eighties will bring a renewal of interest in and growth of year-round education as societies begin a period of rapid transition and transformation leading toward the year 2000 and beyond, and the consideration of alternative global futures,” the 1979-80 NCYRE 7^th Annual National Reference Directory of Year-Round Education said.
    

About a third of the196,000 students on a year-round calendar in 1979-80 school year were located in three communities: Jefferson County, Colorado,  Valley View, Illinois, and Prince William County, Virginia.  All three districts, the big year-round school success stories of the time, would eventually drop the calendar. "The 11 years of Valley View existence proves beyond doubt that the concept can work at all levels of education," the author of the 7^th Annual directory wrote prematurely.[130]

       In 1980, Charles Ballinger, who had been involved with year-round education since 1971,[131] became executive director of the organization, which took up headquarters at the San Diego County Office of Education, where Ballinger worked.
     The organization lined up year-round school consultants for nearly every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. territories and published their names in the 1979-80-reference directory. The year-round school movement was ready for a revival.
     The climate for selling school calendar reform improved in 1983 with the release of  “A Nation At Risk," a government report that set in motion an unprecedented era of criticism of public education in America and a frenzy of activity to improve schools.

3.3 Defining Moment: Governor’s Endorsement

     But the defining moment for the second revival of the year-round movement came with the endorsement of calendar change in Time For Results, a report of education reform recommendations issued in 1986 by the National Governors' Association.  The governors' study was chaired by Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander (who would later become U.S. Education Secretary) and co-chaired by Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton (who would later become president).[132]
     Ballinger's considerable influence in getting the governors' endorsement of year-round school is confirmed by Montana Gov. Ted Schwinden, who headed the School Facility Use segment of the governors' education task force. (Other governors on the committee were George Wallace of Alabama; Ricardo J. Bordallo of Guam; James J. Blanchard of Michigan; Norman H. Bangerter of Utah; George Sinner of North Dakota; and Ed Herschler of Wyoming.)[133]
     Ballinger’s presentation at the first facilities task force hearing in Great, Falls, Mont., “eventually led to our formal endorsement of year-round school calendars,” Schwinden  admitted in his address to NAYRE convention Feb. 2, 1988. “Our reasons were your reasons: cost savings, academic improvement, and the crucial flexibility to accommodate changing school populations.”[134]
     Schwinden clearly gave credit to Ballinger and the NAYRE organization for shaping the recommendations in the facilities report:

"All politicians like to claim credit when people adopt their recommendations and show progress. That will be difficult for the nation's governors in this case, since you [NAYRE] were promoting year-round education long before we came upon the idea.  Nevertheless, you may hear one or more of us claim credit.  Try not to think of it as piracy; it's really flattery." [135] 

     Staff in Schwinden's office told a member of an Oregon year-round school task force that Ballinger essentially wrote the recommendation on year-round school in the widely publicized and circulated report.[136]
     Many business and political leaders latched onto the year-round concept following the glowing review in the national governor's report.  Among them was the charismatic auto industry chief, Lee Iacocca. In his address to a joint meeting of the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Society of Magazine Editors in Oct. 26, 1989, Iacocca called for year-round school as a means to improve public education and ensure the nation is competitive in a global market place.[137]
     Another business and political leader, Republican Gov. Thomas Kean of New Jersey, a co-chairman of the National Governor’s report, and a close friend of Alexander, was already looking at year-round schools at the urging of his appointed staff,[138] which included Walter McCarroll.  McCarroll would later serve as an assistant to Florida Education Commissioner Betty Castor, who launched a new round of year-round school initiatives in 1987, even though more than a decade earlier the state tried and eventually abandoned experiments with the quarter system, a version of a year-round calendar. McCarroll later became a vice president for Chris Whittle's Edison Schools, a for-profit school management firm[139] that was able to tap more funds from states, and increase profit margins by using an expanded school year.
     McCarroll came to New Jersey from the New York State Education Department. In 1963, the New York Joint Legislative Committee on school financing perceived money could be saved by rescheduling the school year and graduating students one or two years earlier.  By shortening the combined years of elementary and secondary schooling, the state could save more than $300 million on school construction costs over 12 years, claimed supporters of calendar reform. A continuing study of the idea was assigned to the State Education Department. James E. Allen Jr., New York Commissioner of Education and an active proponent of calendar revision, would later become President Nixon's first Commission of Education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.[140] Nixon was from California, where year-round school was being used to avoid new school construction. The subsequent appointed chiefs of the U.S. Education Department in the Reagan and Bush administrations were also proponents of year-round education.[141]
     Within months after the release of the National Governors’ report in 1986, the year-round school advocacy group underwent another restructuring, changing its name to the National Association FOR Year-Round Education and filing applications to become a 501C-3  “not-for profit”.[142]  It later formed a foundation that enabled it to do lobbying.[143]
     The organization’s revenues would grow dramatically from an estimated $58,200 in revenues (filed with incorporation papers in 1986), to more than half a million by 1992.   The annual NAYRE conference accounted for 79% of its $533,960 revenues in 1992.[144] That year, Ballinger would receive 15% of those revenues or  $80,038 in “retro pay 1990-1992.[145]  A few years later, NAYRE’s annual revenues would be nearly three-quarters of a million dollars. The director’s “contract services and honorarium totaled $85,608, or 30 percent of the salaries paid by the NAYRE organization, according to records from its accountant.[146] Ballinger would remain executive director until his retirement in 2000.[147]

3.4 The  Agrarian Calendar Marketing Focus
     One of the chief arguments for calendar change by year-round school proponents, which is parroted in federal, state and other reports, is that the traditional school calendar is an outdated agrarian calendar. 
     For example, this is the opening paragraph of a 1988 Educational Leadership article by Charles Ballinger, executive director of the National Association for Year-Round Education:

“The September-June school calendar has outlived its usefulness.  Originally it had a strong purpose: to enhance the prevailing agricultural economy of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  It was not designed to enhance instruction then, and it does not do so now.” [148]

     Though the  “agrarian calendar” is a misnomer,  "It has proved to be a handy argument. We're not adding school--we're reversing an anachronism," one reporter wrote. [149]
     Actually, the year-round calendar with its winter breaks and short summer break that NAYRE promotes as a modern-day remedy for school overcrowding and other school ills, resembles the school calendar of the agrarian era, historians say.
     In March 2001, Tennessee historian Nell Blakenship, a past president of the Rutherford County Historical Society, noted the school board’s proposal for a late July or early August start date resembled the agrarian schedule of the Depression era, when schools let out three to six weeks in the summer so children could pick cotton.  Students would get breaks at the holidays and ended their school year in March in time for the planting season.
     “That was an agrarian calendar. We've just gradually worked back to July. Each year we go a little bit further back to that calendar of the 1930s." Blankenship said.[150]
     The Rutherford County school board would later reject a district-wide year-round calendar,[151] a move supported by school board member John Hodge Jones, none other than the man who chaired the federal government’s famous Prisoner's of Time study issued in 1994 that called for a change in the “agrarian” school calendar.[152] The report also presented glowing examples of year-round schools, though stopping short of endorsing the year-round calendar.  In 1997, Jones as superintendent of  Murfreesboro City Schools even proposed a school schedule for his district that would operate in shifts, like 24-hour industrial plants, sending children to school from 3:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., and offering extended school services until midnight.[153]
     In School’s In: The history of summer education in American public schools,  a scholarly examination of the school calendar in “agrarian” days,  Kenneth Gold (2002) found:

1) “Farm life did not require a summer break in schooling, but rather a relatively brief and haphazard school year in general.”[154]   Early school chroniclers note “it was the custom in the 17^th century and for much of the 18^th for schools to be in session from April to September, instead of during the winter months at present.”[155]

2) “Rural communities closed schools when farm life was most intense, but those closures occurred during spring plantings and fall harvests.  As a result, country schools typically opened just during the summer and winter months.”[156]

3) “The holding of country school sessions was subservient to weather conditions as well as to seasonal agricultural practices.  A school year comprised of brief winter and summer sessions was a mainstay of rural America in the 19^th century.”

 4) “Agrarian conditions did not necessitate summer vacations but they did play an important role in the shaping of school calendars.”[157]

     Gold’s in-depth examination of school schedules found American education has flirted with the all-year school or some version of a year-round calendar for centuries.[158]  
     Promoters of year-round schools and longer school years leave the impression that education’s glory days vanished when the school calendar was reconfigured with a long summer vacation.   But Gold’s research shows:

“The school calendar and summer school structures which seem embedded are really only creations of the past 150 years.  They are in no way natural and therefore are malleable by citizens, politicians, educators and scholars. …There certainly is no ‘golden age’ of summer education to return to—early summer sessions and vacation schools had their own shortcomings.[159] … Simply put, summer education is not widespread because of past ethnic and class fissions, conflicting beliefs about human physical and mental frailty, and process of state growth and bureaucratic expansion.”[160]

“Is the YRS a model for all schools to emulate?” What is needed to answer this question are two types of appraisals: An evaluation of the research on whether such summer schooling produces its intended outcomes in achievement and a value judgment about whether this is the type of learning is desirable for schools in the summer.”[161]

       The academic effectiveness of all variations of summer school programs has been hotly debated for more than 200 years and, lacking hard evidence of its academic value, often axed because of tight budgets, Gold documents.
     Gene Glass, education researcher at Arizona State University, has this to say about year-round school research in a January 2002 report on education reform policies:
     "Not all studies have failed to find achievement advantages for the year-round calendar. Those that do claim advantages, however, stem disproportionately from an advocacy organization that has grown up around this issue: the National Association for Year-Round Education (www.nayre.org/). (Institutional memberships range from $350 to $750 per year depending on the number of students that a school or school district has enrolled in year-round education.) NAYRE publishes its own research reports, and avoids established peer-reviewed scholarly journals; copies of research reports outlining the benefits of the year-round calendar sell for about $30. 'Negative' studies have tended to come from researchers working in universities."[162]

3.5  Don’t Be Confused By The Facts
     That such fact-laden, academic studies pose a serious threat to the year-round movement is evident in the writings of the year-round school marketers.  In their list of strategies for implementing year-round school, they warn school district policymakers to limit informational meetings to small groups, which limit exposure to the negatives on the year-round calendar.
     “We advise districts not to start out with a large meeting at the onset.  All it does is give a few people a large forum in which to voice their complaints,” said the coordinator of the Florida’s year-round school pilot program in Marion County, Florida. “If we had to do it over, we would not have held a large general meeting in the beginning and instead have held smaller group meetings. It was the worst thing we ever did.”[163]
     Valley View Superintendent Ken Hermansen attributes his series of small “kaffee klatches” and person-to-person contacts with the acceptance of the year-round school proposal in the 1970s.   “It is noteworthy that the superintendent of schools accepted 60 invitations to talk with small neighborhood groups (in addition to service clubs and churches) over a period of 18 months to explain the year-round school program.”[1]
     Political strategies to gain public support for and to implement the year-round school concept were discussed at length by the year-round school “renaissance” writers of the 1970s as well as year-round school leaders in the 1990s.
     In fact, a 6-page article in the 16-page fall 1993 quarterly newsletter of the National Association For Year-round Education, focused on the political strategy.  The article, “Making it Happen: How to Handle the Politics of Year-Round Education,” was written by Patrick McDaniel, who was in the embarrassing position of seeing his own Albuquerque, New Mexico, school district cut a large segment of its year-round schools as he served as NAYRE president in 1993.
     McDaniel, as year-round school leaders before him, attempts to dismiss opposition to school calendar change as a simple matter of resistance to change. “The change in the school calendar that we are proposing…threatens the very structure of life for many people.”[2]  To counter that resistance, he suggests focusing on and marketing to the 50 percent of the people who typically are either ambivalent and/or neutral when change is proposed. McDaniel outlines an 11-point strategy for the smooth implementation of year-round school that might be interpreted this way:

 --Select strong leaders to sell the idea. [Weed out the weak links.]

--Put early focus on district policymakers. [Sell the power structure before you sell the people.]

--Clarifying the rationale for community buy-in. [Identify and focus on the need/problem that calendar change will answer.]

--Borrow strategies used in political campaigns to win people over. “Be aware of various groups and their influence and gain their active cooperation.”

--Develop a public relations strategy immediately.

-- “Develop an implementation strategy…voluntary vs. mandatory, gradual vs. immediate implementation, total district or partial district, elementary, secondary or K-12”  and then stick with it.

-- “Be aware of the dynamics of change…questions of pacing.”

--Make sure your staff has bought in.  “One thing is clear: year-round education cannot be successful of the school and district staffs are undermining or sabotaging implementation efforts.”

--Avoid making the claims that the year-round  “calendar is the be-all and end-all of education” even though we know it is. Emphasize, instead that “it is an instructional schedule that provides opportunities for continuous learning that can benefit students.”

  --“Take the time to plan.” [Or make sure you have everything in place—take 1 to 2 years doing it—so you won’t get shot down.]

4. The Persuasive Reports on Year-Round School

     Policymakers looking for guidance on school calendar change had an abundance of persuasive information to select from in a rash of reports by government and quasi-government groups published in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. 
     A review of these reports finds many parroted one another. Many used as main references information from National Association For Year-Round Education members and affiliates. Most of the reports are long on the virtues and potential benefits of a longer school year and a year-round calendar and short on criticisms. Conspicuously absent from most of them is an examination of how many experiments with calendar change had failed and the reasons why.  More often than not, the reports dismiss failed year-round programs as a failure to accept change. Such themes mirrored the main reason for resistance to year-round school given by NAYRE representatives: Tradition. In some cases, the glowing examples of year-round school programs cited in these reports would not exist a year or two later because of dissatisfaction with costs and academic outcomes.
     The following is a retrospective then-and-now look at some of the major reports that encouraged longer school year and year-round school experiments in the late 1990s, with background information on those reports. The reports examined are:

  1986 – The National Governors’ Association: Time for Results
 1992 – The Southern Growth Policies Board: Year-Round Education: Restructuring –Schools to complement a Changing Economy
  1993 – Florida’s Project Lead.
  1991 – The [Florida] Governor’s Education Task Force Report.

1986 - National Governors' Association
 “Time For Results” The Governors’ 1991 Report on Education
     This report, produced in 1986 by a National Governors’ Association task force, was pivotal in the revival of the year-round school movement.  The task force was  established to examine the American education system  and recommend reforms.
     As pointed out earlier in this paper, this document with recommendations to guide the nation’s schools in the coming decade was never debated, discussed or voted on by the National Governors’ group.  Gov. Schwinden,  who chaired the Task Force on School Facilities, said in a speech to the National Association For Year-Round Education February 2, 1988:

“Time for Results: The Governors’ 1991 Report on Education, was an unusual document when it was published in 1986. It remains so today. Unlike our Governors’ Association’s formal positions on state and federal issues, Time for Results was NOT debated and voted on. That policy offered the unique opportunity for the members of each of seven separate task forces to present the best ideas they could without worrying about “watering them down” to achieve political consensus.”[166]

     Gov. Lamar Alexander, the Republican chairman of the National Governors’ Association, instructed seven appointed task forces to “ask tough questions about education and report back possible answers—answers that represented top-notch professional thinking, citizens’ concerns and the best judgment of the governors themselves,” Schwinden said.
     The task force structure opened up a rare opportunity for a determined faction, and a fledgling organization of year-round school proponents to influence and shape national education policy with little challenge to their contentions that calendar change would improve education and reduce school costs.
     There were only 12 presenters at the very first hearing of the facilities task force held Nov. 19, 1985 in Great Falls, Montana, 8 of them representatives of various Montana education groups, 1 from Michigan, 1 from the Washington office of the National Education Association,  and 2 from the San Diego, California-based year-round school advocacy group, the National Council on Year-Round Education. The NCYRE would become the National Association FOR Year-Round Education within months after the release of the National Governors’ report, which made converting schools to year-round part of goals to reach by 1991. There were only 3 presenters at the second facilities task force hearing in Washington, D.C., all representatives of school construction groups.
     Several things distinguish the Facilities Task Force Report from the others:

       Schwinden admits the governors’ group bought into the year-round school idea at its very first hearing, where presentations were made by Ballinger, the executive secretary of NCYRE, and Thomas Balakas of California,  president-elect of  NCYRE.
     Ballinger’s presentation  “provided a welcome focus for our inquiries, and it eventually led to our formal endorsement of year-round school calendars,” Schwinden told the

NAYRE convention in 1988. “Our reasons were your reasons: Cost savings, academic improvement and the crucial flexibility to accommodate changing school populations.”[167]
     Here’s how Schwinden summarized recommendations of the Task Force on School Facility Use in his NAYRE convention speech:

  National Governors’ Report Rhetoric:  

     The rhetoric in the 1986 National Governors' report and the realities of year-round schools as discussed earlier in this paper are starkly different:

·        “We now have proof that many students learn more when they do not have three-month vacations, and that a year-round calendar can be less expensive for districts with growing enrollments that put up new buildings.”[169]

·        “Educators to date have found that improved academic performance can result from a restructured calendar that shortens the vacation periods away from formal instruction.”[170]

·        “Our nine-month calendar was based on the needs of farmers.  Youngsters were needed on the farm during June, July, and August, so the school summer vacation was created.”[171]

·        “Experience with year-round schooling found that well-designed programs produced significant benefits. These include reduced costs of certain texts and educational materials and higher test scores.”[172]

·        “Shorter, more frequent vacations appear to improve attendance figures during instruction periods.”[173]

·        “Year-round schools can produce some additional costs, such as increased transportation and energy expenses and teacher salaries. The salary issue carries with it both positive and negative factors. Clearly, it does raise operating costs.”[174]

·       “States should provide incentives by…offering planning grants to districts that will use a year-round calendar.  Such grants could combine technical assistance from the state department and from other districts that have successfully operated such programs, plus funds to pay staff who will develop plans for the district.” [176]

·        “Task force testimony about …initiation of year-round calendars identified the common and most difficult obstacle: tradition….Governors can use their unique roles to promote untraditional ideas…The simple admonition to communities that ‘Your taxes paid for these buildings—don’t you want to use them?’ is a place to start, and may well serve to encourage new thinking within the community.”[177]

·        “School officials need to ask…what improvements would make multitrack, year-round scheduling easier.”[178]

  The report made no mention of a National Education Association Report that found virtually every school district that had tried a year-round calendar  had dropped it by 1958. Clearly, the facilities task force heard only one side of the year-round school story.

  Versus… the  Reality: The state with the largest experience with year-round schools is California, which remained at the bottom of the performance list (see chart below)  on the 1998 National Assessment for Education Progress (the most recent scores available in 2001).[179] Additionally, the multi-track calendar has been found to segregate by socio-economic, ethnic and racial groups and creates education inequities, according to an analysis of 1998 California test scores of 12,000 students by the University of California, Riverside. The Williams v. California suit, documents the tremendous wear and tear on school facilities of using them year-round and the high costs of maintaining them.