What drives the calendar for public schools? Growing up in the northern Virginia suburbs, we started the day after Labor Day and ended during the first week of June. Thirty years later in upstate NY, my children started around the same time but didn’t finish until nearly the end of June. My younger nieces and nephews in the Midwest start in mid-August and finish before Memorial Day. What factors set these dates?
Divergent Philosophies
Before the 20th century, public school schedules were set by the local districts to match their needs and resources. Major urban cities like New York operated nearly year-round schools with short holiday and summer breaks. Agriculturally driven rural communities focused on winter and summer sessions with long breaks in spring and fall to support planting and harvesting.
These differing philosophies produced different problems. With its longer breaks and shorter sessions, children in rural districts often trailed behind their urban counterparts. Urban students had more class time but suffered from different problems. In addition to the heat, fear of diseases in densely packed city classrooms led to high summer absenteeism.
Compulsory Education Laws
To address these issues and ‘democratize’ education for every student, reformers enacted laws to standardize the number of school days at ~180. Urban schools gave up their summer days, and rural districts accepted a continuous calendar. The latter was made possible by the increased mechanization of farm work. The result was the Labor Day to June calendar of my youth.
Optimization for Performance
After getting every student equal time in the classroom, the natural next step was to measure the results. This led to the growth of national-level standardized testing at many grade levels and the proliferation of Advanced Placement courses. These allow high school students to receive college credit based on exam scores. For fairness and to mesh with colleges, these are national tests in May. The importance of these factors drove the next round of calendar tweaks. Modern technology (vaccinations, air conditioning) made opening in August more attractive. I vaguely recall that my senior year of high school began before Labor Day.
Issues
As our featured map shows, not everyone has accepted the most recent school calendar optimization suggestions. Economic factors, such as business reliance on summer teen workers, are one factor. NY summers arrive a bit later than in many other parts of the country. Additionally, the swarms of black flies make areas like the Adirondacks unbearable until later in June. These compress the vacation season, making an earlier school start harder to implement. On top of that, during the energy crisis of the 70s, NY adopted a week-long winter break in February. As a result, NY students have 3-4 weeks less time to prepare for their AP exams.
Future Changes?
Cognitive Science researchers advocate tackling summer learning loss by eliminating the long summer break in favor of shorter ~2-week intermissions between sessions. Driven by sleep science, mental health experts are pushing for a later start to the school day. California and Florida have already passed legislation mandating later start times for teen students. Will shorter summer breaks follow?
As always thanks for reading.
Armen
Note to pay the bills
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