Do year-round schools improve student learning?
The question of whether year-round education improves student achievement is a key issue in the year-round schooling debate. Proponents of year-round schools claim there are educational benefits for students, reflected in improved test scores. Yet there exists a substantial body of work (Zykowski, 1991, Harp, 1993) which shows no significant differences in educational achievement between students in year-round schools and students in schools with traditional calendars. Another claim (Ballinger et al, 1987) is that long summer breaks in traditional school calendars are harmful as students forget previous learning, and valuable time is taken up in reviewing of curriculum at the start of a new academic year. As an alternative to the traditional calendar, it is often claimed that year-round programs reduce such review time as students have less time to forget material. But the work of Allinder et al (1992) and Wintre (1986) casts doubt on the perception that students in traditional calenda
