Year Long Schools

The National School Boards Association has an interesting article about year long schools over on its blog. The author writes:

With all the talk about global competitiveness, should our students be in school 12 months of the year? Not to mention the fact that many students, as the article notes, "are loitering in parking lots and shopping malls, cruising iffy websites, and slouching toward academic disaster." Sure, there are those kids whose parents are home or still others whose parents can afford to send them to summer camp or for a month at grandma's. But what of those who are home alone all summer, avoiding their summer homework packets, with no air conditioning, no supervision, perhaps not even a guaranteed lunchtime meal, with only Jerry Springer and the internet to babysit them?

Even if schools don't start running through the summer, a colleague of mine offered an interesting suggestion a few weeks ago. He said that students should switch teachers and grades after spring vacation instead of after summer vacation. This way teachers would have their assigned classes before and after the long summer break. They would take a greater interest in their own students' continued learning over the summer. Perhaps students would take a greater interest in their own summer learning as well, recognizing that work products would count towards grades with their assigned teacher.