How schools’ long summer breaks started, why some want the vacation cut short

As summer approaches, schools across the country have either wrapped up for the year or will soon have an extended vacation. Most adults work during the summer, but thanks to outdated medical beliefs, the convergence of rural and urban calendars, and educational reforms, today’s children enjoy their summer vacation.

Schools didn’t always have such a long summer break, said Ken Gold, dean of education at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. In the early 19th century, schools in cities were typically open year-round, while schools in rural areas typically had two terms, one in winter and one in summer.

“At the end of the 19th century, it had not yet converged to what we have now, but the writing is on the wall,” he said
Gold, author of “School’s In: Summer Education and American Public Schools.”

How did the school summer holidays start?

School was a year-round event in colonial times, said James Pedersen, school superintendent and author of “Summer Versus School: The Possibilities of Year-Round School.” As late as 1841, some schools in Boston and Philadelphia held classes 240-250 days a year.

Most public elementary and secondary schools are now open just 180 days a year, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

Although the length of the school year is relatively consistent across states today, there were wide variations in the early 19th century. At the time, schools in cities were typically open year-round, while schools in rural areas typically had two terms, one in winter and one in summer, Gold said. Schools in rural areas had far fewer school days than schools in cities.

Many people incorrectly believe the agrarian myth of summer vacation, that children took time off from school during the summer to help their parents in the fields and farms, Gold said. Although older students in rural areas took summer breaks from school to help their parents, the most intense work occurred during the spring planting and autumn harvest seasons.

The move to incorporate extended summer vacations into school calendars began in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Pederson said.

As the summer heat hit the cities, people with resources left the cities to spend the summer in the mountains or at beach resorts, Gold said.

“It’s not like these families send their kids to public schools in large numbers, but they typically run them,” Gold said. “And then you start to have a kind of summer withdrawal because people aren’t around — some of the people who matter and are making the decisions about the schools.”

Rural schools have begun to mimic the structure of the city’s school year — opening for longer periods and eliminating summer terms as well, Gold said.

Some of the changes were attributed to educational reformers, who considered summer terms to be academically weaker and also felt that the school year in rural areas was too short. They also wanted teachers to spend time training and develop programs for them in the summer.

Persistent medical notions Excessive taxation dating back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries also played a role, Gold said. Although science moved away from this in the late 1800s, Gold said it became ingrained in the minds of many people that “excessive use of the mind would lead to physical and mental debility.

Why long summer vacations still exist

Schools use the summer holidays to carry out repairs on buildings. Some school buildings are also not equipped with the air conditioning this would be necessary to keep children in class during the summer months. About 36,000 schools nationwide need heating, ventilation and air conditioning upgrades, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a 2020 report. reportthe latest statistics available.

Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program at Harvard University, explained last year to CBS News that many schools were built to retain heat.

“The climate is changing rapidly and our buildings are not. Our buildings are not keeping up,” Allen said then.

Teachers may also not be prepared to give up summer vacation. Part of the profession’s attraction, for some, is the way the schedule is structured each year, Steele said.

“So I can imagine that moving to a year-round model could exacerbate some recruitment and retention issues,” she said.

Outside of schools, there is also an economic barrier to ending or shortening summer vacations.

“Entire industries are around the summer holidays – think teenage jobSummer camps, vacations, back-to-school sales, it’s all there,” Pederson said. “It’s very hard to undo that.”

Pederson and Gold attributed the continued use of long spring breaks to tradition.

“I think people’s recreation and leisure practices in the summer are pretty powerful barriers, I think, to change,” Gold said.

David Hornak, who is a school superintendent as well as executive director of the National Association for Year-Round Education, said most parents and guardians went to school on a traditional academic calendar and want their children to have the same opportunities as them. I did it in the summer.

“A lot has changed in the last 130 years, except the most widely used school calendar across the country,” Hornak said.

Will summer holidays get shorter?

Summer holidays are already shorter in some schools across the country following a balanced calendar. Hornak District has largely followed the balanced calendar model, which used to be called the year-round model, for the past 30 years.

“Year-round education, or what we now call balanced calendar education, is based on the premise that the school year continues to be 180 school days, but that these 180 school days are used in a more efficiently throughout the calendar year,” Hornak said.

Most balanced schools start in early August, then take a break mid-fall, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, mid-winter, mid-spring, and Memorial weekend Day. A traditional school’s summer vacation is shortened, with days reallocated to provide time off at other times.

Michigan parents Kellie Flaminio’s two children go to school in the Hornak district. Flaminio, who also works at the state Department of Education, said she looked for a district with schools with a balanced calendar, even though she herself attended schools with more traditional academic calendars. Flaminio said she and her husband work full time, so the balanced calendar worked better for their schedules.

“Having to pay for childcare during the weeks the kids aren’t in school made it a little easier to spread it out than that big chunk all at once,” she said.

The mother said it has also been great for her son, now a sophomore in high school, and her daughter, now in sixth grade, who have never commented on feeling like they are missing out by not having a 12-week summer vacation.

“Honestly, I think they get a little bored and are ready to go back to school when we go,” she said.

About 4,000 schools in the U.S. follow a balanced calendar model, representing about 10% of the total student population, Hornak said. His organization advocates for districts across the county to use their 180 school days a year more efficiently.

According to Hornak, balanced calendars lead to increases in student achievement and a reduction in summer learning loss. They can also help with staff retention because they provide teachers with more frequent breaks.

These regular breaks also provide opportunities for schools to pre-teach or reteach concepts to students who may need help. Enrichment may also be offered to advanced students during these breaks.

Pederson said school year schedules don’t have to be the same length; they can be individualized based on the student to match their skill level. He also noted that schools should prepare children for future careers and that giving them 10 to 12 weeks off in the summer makes that preparation difficult.

“If we’re trying to prepare them for what the future holds, it really doesn’t fit into that, right? Because no other profession has so much free time,” he said.