Jacob Hill

English 220
3/4/15
Bill Clintons Big Ideas
This blog is going to discuss President Clinton and his interview
in 2008, which brings up a couple of different big ideas to fix education
not only domestically but also internationally. The main point I am
going to be arguing for in this blog is his view on the length of our
school year and the rigor of our high school curriculum.
In this country our public school year for the great majority of
students is based on an agricultural schedule. This was done so
students can go back home and help their families on the farm when
especially needed. Times have dramatically changed, according to the
EPA, There are over 313,000,000 people living in the United States. Of
that population, less than 1% claim farming as an occupation (and
about 2% actually live on farms)(DEMO. Paragraph 1). Total today
their around 2.2 million farms this is down from 6.8 million in 1935(EPA
paragraph 6). Much more information about this change at
http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics.html. The
question needs to asked why should we have an education system
designed around about 1-2 percent of the population?
Many studies have shown that in a traditional year with a long
summer break students lose knowledge and ability because the
information gained during the year escapes due to inactivity.

The graph shows dips during the summer months.

A
Meta
annalist done by Cooper, Charlton, Valentine, Muhlenbruck, and
Bormen strongly suggests that information is consistently lost during
the summer periods of the traditional school year. They also suggest
that summer school is beneficial to students but that is for a different
time.
So what does a year round school look like and offer for benefits?
There are different styles of year round school terms. The most popular
is a 45/15 plan. Which means 45 days on then 15 off. With holidays
worked in. This plan has the same amount of days in class 180 but
without long breaks where knowledge is forgotten. From an economic
standpoint, the traditional system during the hottest time of the year
schools are kept cool as not to damage anything inside, but they are
empty. If schools went year round the breaks would be more split up
and not have to be cooling empty buildings. From the parents
perspective it could be very beneficial. Parents are forced to use their
vacation time during the busiest and most expensive times of the year,
winter holiday and summer break. If breaks were scattered across the
year it would allow more flexibility for travel and time off in the
corporate world.
Another advantage of the year round school schedule is that less
time is spent catching students up from the long summer. This means
more curriculums are up for grabs during the year. Any entry college
professor would tell you a stronger high school education would only
be beneficial on the next level. More time means more knowledge.
There are drawbacks to the year round system, mainly music and
sports would have to dramatically change schedules to fit a new year
round system. Breaks every 45 days would interrupt any sports
system of training and competing. Also the entire district would have
to adopt the system and not only one school because parents could
have kids in different schools and on different schedules.
I believe that for the majority of schools in this country a
yearlong school year would be beneficial. The reasons for success
would be updating an outdated program, less knowledge lost over a
long break, and more flexibility for schools and parents.
Bibliography
"Demographics." EPA. Environmental Protection Agency.
<http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/demographics.html>. Web. 5
Mar. 2015.

Harris Cooper, Kelly Charlton, Jeff C. Valentine, Laura Muhlenbruck and

Geoffrey D. Borman
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development
Vol. 65, No. 1, Making the Most of Summer School: A Meta-Analytic and
Narrative Review (2000), pp. i-vi+1-127