CPS Adds 91 More 'Year-Round' Schools

By Prescott Carlson in News on Apr 22, 2009 9:45PM

Chicago Public Schools will be increasing its number of "year-round" schools this fall to 132, a move CPS CEO Ron Huberman says is being made because the extended schedule was requested by many parents and educators. "Year-round" is a misnomer (although we're sure the students don't feel that way) -- there's still a 6 week break as classes will end in mid-June and start again the first week of August, and additional breaks are added throughout the year making the total number of days spent in a classroom similar to other schools. Huberman says the new schedule reduces "the amount of learning forgotten over the long summer break and give[s] children a 'safe environment' for most of the summer, when violence levels tend to spike." We'll give him the safe environment part, but if kids are really forgetting what they've learned in 3 months, then they haven't really learned it in the first place -- which would mean something else is broken besides summer vacations.

While the school district says state test results back up their decision, Paul von Hippel, a sociologist at Ohio State University, would likely dispute Huberman's claims -- he conducted a study in 2007 that showed little or no benefit to year-round school over traditional schedules, and was quoted as saying, “We found that students in year-round schools learn more during the summer, when others are on vacation, but they seem to learn less than other children during the rest of the year.” Other studies going all the way back to the 80s produced similar results, with some even showing "negative effects for year-round schooling."

So call us cynical, but we think there's a different reason for increasing the number of multi-track year-round schools -- it's cheaper than building new schools, which of course the CPS is in no position to do thanks to the slow draining of funding away from the district into the Daley TIF slush fund. [Trib]