Is there ANY way to put the genie back in the bottle re: all of the religious holidays off?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's the same number of days off, just rearranged. Summer is shorter. This is actually better for learning loss. Also, Friday is staff planning day, not religious holiday. It says so on the calendar. Teachers need time to plan or your kids can sit in class all day every day and they won't learn anything because we won't have any time to plan decent lessons.

Teachers just had a week off. Get your lazy ass back to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:No one is thinking about the low income and ESL students who need consistent support to make progress against their educational goals.

You think you are, but have no research and the research that is out there says it doesn’t matter WHEN, but it does matter how many hours.

Show us that research. There is no research that says hours, no matter how incinsistently applied, is the same as a consistent schedule. You're misinterpreting research on alternative schedules.

I already did in at least of these threads. The main research said 180 days is 180 days and the TIME in school matters over placement of the days.
All other research about extending the school year and adding breaks is mixed. Feel free to find the link I already posted in an easy to watch PBS segment or do more research yourself and post that.

I believe the study was comparing a traditional 9-10 month calendar with a year round calendar. I don’t believe any study has been performed where 180 days were randomly selected to hold school over the course of a year to prove time in school mattered over placement of days. Traditional and full year calendars still have consistent 4-5 day school weeks. It’s the distribution of longer breaks that changes.

The researcher who did the study went i. PBS news hour and said it didn’t matter how you get the 180 days, it was the number of hours that matters.

Because of emergencies days and snow days it would be hard to get a study that can accurately show much more than that with a large enough sample size to make a correlation.

Are you talking about the Paul Thompson Oregon State study? He didn't research *inconsistent* school schedules or control for that. You're taking the conclusion that the number of hours matters as a baseline, and applying it overly broad, in a way that is not consistent with the research.

No. Although that particular study also emphasized the importance of instructional hours during the school day.

Here is the PBS quote. I had a longer reply with more studies, but it didn’t submit, so here is a quick quote:

Despite the enthusiasm here for the year-round schedule, the data on its effectiveness are quite mixed. It is not clear that a balanced calendar really helps students retain more information or improves test scores.

A 2015 study found that year-round students do pull ahead during the summer, but students on a traditional nine-month calendar catch up and pull ahead during the rest of the year.

Study author Paul von Hippel:

Well, it is basically the same 175, 180 days spread out differently across the year. And since total instruction doesn't increase, total learning doesn't increase either.

Either way FCPS has a 5 day a week calendar. There isn’t much research about days off during the week, but FCPS has elongated the calendar and shortened summer break while adding in more days off. That is a good thing for many secondary kids.

That said, there is middle ground for FCPS if there are not staffing issues on some of these holidays. The emphasis on world religions and holidays is very important as it helps establish curiosity about the world and widen our kids perspectives. Perhaps some of the days can be more clustered with weekends, or perhaps the board and parents can see gain their own perspective and see the forest through the trees. This years calendar was a hard one and the snow days and extra voting days really added to a lot of frustration.

Yes, that's right, there *isn't* research that says random days off will lead to the same learning outcomes as long as you have enough hours.

Both of these studies discuss having enough hours of instruction but ultimately are looking at larger scheduling variations. These studies don't speak to the changes FCPS has made.

Kind of…. But talking about instructional hours IS the way the VDOE has designated looking at the school year AND it is backed by these researchers that hours matter. So that finding is the MOST applicable study available.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one is thinking about the low income and ESL students who need consistent support to make progress against their educational goals.

You think you are, but have no research and the research that is out there says it doesn’t matter WHEN, but it does matter how many hours.

Show us that research. There is no research that says hours, no matter how incinsistently applied, is the same as a consistent schedule. You're misinterpreting research on alternative schedules.

I already did in at least of these threads. The main research said 180 days is 180 days and the TIME in school matters over placement of the days.
All other research about extending the school year and adding breaks is mixed. Feel free to find the link I already posted in an easy to watch PBS segment or do more research yourself and post that.

I believe the study was comparing a traditional 9-10 month calendar with a year round calendar. I don’t believe any study has been performed where 180 days were randomly selected to hold school over the course of a year to prove time in school mattered over placement of days. Traditional and full year calendars still have consistent 4-5 day school weeks. It’s the distribution of longer breaks that changes.

The researcher who did the study went i. PBS news hour and said it didn’t matter how you get the 180 days, it was the number of hours that matters.

Because of emergencies days and snow days it would be hard to get a study that can accurately show much more than that with a large enough sample size to make a correlation.

Are you talking about the Paul Thompson Oregon State study? He didn't research *inconsistent* school schedules or control for that. You're taking the conclusion that the number of hours matters as a baseline, and applying it overly broad, in a way that is not consistent with the research.

No. Although that particular study also emphasized the importance of instructional hours during the school day.

Here is the PBS quote. I had a longer reply with more studies, but it didn’t submit, so here is a quick quote:

Despite the enthusiasm here for the year-round schedule, the data on its effectiveness are quite mixed. It is not clear that a balanced calendar really helps students retain more information or improves test scores.

A 2015 study found that year-round students do pull ahead during the summer, but students on a traditional nine-month calendar catch up and pull ahead during the rest of the year.

Study author Paul von Hippel:

Well, it is basically the same 175, 180 days spread out differently across the year. And since total instruction doesn't increase, total learning doesn't increase either.

Either way FCPS has a 5 day a week calendar. There isn’t much research about days off during the week, but FCPS has elongated the calendar and shortened summer break while adding in more days off. That is a good thing for many secondary kids.

That said, there is middle ground for FCPS if there are not staffing issues on some of these holidays. The emphasis on world religions and holidays is very important as it helps establish curiosity about the world and widen our kids perspectives. Perhaps some of the days can be more clustered with weekends, or perhaps the board and parents can see gain their own perspective and see the forest through the trees. This years calendar was a hard one and the snow days and extra voting days really added to a lot of frustration.

Yes, that's right, there *isn't* research that says random days off will lead to the same learning outcomes as long as you have enough hours.

Both of these studies discuss having enough hours of instruction but ultimately are looking at larger scheduling variations. These studies don't speak to the changes FCPS has made.

Kind of…. But talking about instructional hours IS the way the VDOE has designated looking at the school year AND it is backed by these researchers that hours matter. So that finding is the MOST applicable study available.

You can't change a key variable (consistency) that was not part of the study, and then say that the study is still applicable. It may not be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:School board voted down having school on Columbus Day, even though FCPS has more non-5-day weeks than any other large school district in the country

From Melanie Meren's Facebook post, they did vote to have school on Veteran's Day. They also voted to limit half days to 8 days per year (proposal was for 4) -- I am hoping this is a hard limit for all half days because if not, this seems no different than the current situation as elementary kids had 8 3hr early releases this year. I can live with elementary having 4 of the 3 hr early releases in addition to the traditional 2 hr early release for all at the end of the quarter.

The 8 days are the early release days at elem, not the early release days due to quarter end, right?

I'm not sure from her post and I didn't watch the meeting. She said the proposal was amended from 4 early release to 8, so I'm hoping the amending to 8 was to allow for the 4 end of qtr early releases and 4 3hr elementary early releases -- aka someone realized the wording of 4 would mean end of qtr only. I hope it isn't 8 of the 3 hr elementary early releases because that is exactly what they had planned this year (8 elementary ER and the 4 end of qtr) before canceling the April elementary early release.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:School board voted down having school on Columbus Day, even though FCPS has more non-5-day weeks than any other large school district in the country

From Melanie Meren's Facebook post, they did vote to have school on Veteran's Day. They also voted to limit half days to 8 days per year (proposal was for 4) -- I am hoping this is a hard limit for all half days because if not, this seems no different than the current situation as elementary kids had 8 3hr early releases this year. I can live with elementary having 4 of the 3 hr early releases in addition to the traditional 2 hr early release for all at the end of the quarter.

The 8 days are the early release days at elem, not the early release days due to quarter end, right?

I'm not sure from her post and I didn't watch the meeting. She said the proposal was amended from 4 early release to 8, so I'm hoping the amending to 8 was to allow for the 4 end of qtr early releases and 4 3hr elementary early releases -- aka someone realized the wording of 4 would mean end of qtr only. I hope it isn't 8 of the 3 hr elementary early releases because that is exactly what they had planned this year (8 elementary ER and the 4 end of qtr) before canceling the April elementary early release.

They voted to allow no more than 8 early releases total. This includes end of quarter, early releases for professional development, etc. No more than 8 early releases can be scheduled next year for any reason (unscheduled early releases for weather conditions would be in a separate category).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one is thinking about the low income and ESL students who need consistent support to make progress against their educational goals.

You think you are, but have no research and the research that is out there says it doesn’t matter WHEN, but it does matter how many hours.

Show us that research. There is no research that says hours, no matter how incinsistently applied, is the same as a consistent schedule. You're misinterpreting research on alternative schedules.

I already did in at least of these threads. The main research said 180 days is 180 days and the TIME in school matters over placement of the days.
All other research about extending the school year and adding breaks is mixed. Feel free to find the link I already posted in an easy to watch PBS segment or do more research yourself and post that.

I believe the study was comparing a traditional 9-10 month calendar with a year round calendar. I don’t believe any study has been performed where 180 days were randomly selected to hold school over the course of a year to prove time in school mattered over placement of days. Traditional and full year calendars still have consistent 4-5 day school weeks. It’s the distribution of longer breaks that changes.

The researcher who did the study went i. PBS news hour and said it didn’t matter how you get the 180 days, it was the number of hours that matters.

Because of emergencies days and snow days it would be hard to get a study that can accurately show much more than that with a large enough sample size to make a correlation.

Are you talking about the Paul Thompson Oregon State study? He didn't research *inconsistent* school schedules or control for that. You're taking the conclusion that the number of hours matters as a baseline, and applying it overly broad, in a way that is not consistent with the research.

No. Although that particular study also emphasized the importance of instructional hours during the school day.

Here is the PBS quote. I had a longer reply with more studies, but it didn’t submit, so here is a quick quote:

Despite the enthusiasm here for the year-round schedule, the data on its effectiveness are quite mixed. It is not clear that a balanced calendar really helps students retain more information or improves test scores.

A 2015 study found that year-round students do pull ahead during the summer, but students on a traditional nine-month calendar catch up and pull ahead during the rest of the year.

Study author Paul von Hippel:

Well, it is basically the same 175, 180 days spread out differently across the year. And since total instruction doesn't increase, total learning doesn't increase either.

Either way FCPS has a 5 day a week calendar. There isn’t much research about days off during the week, but FCPS has elongated the calendar and shortened summer break while adding in more days off. That is a good thing for many secondary kids.

That said, there is middle ground for FCPS if there are not staffing issues on some of these holidays. The emphasis on world religions and holidays is very important as it helps establish curiosity about the world and widen our kids perspectives. Perhaps some of the days can be more clustered with weekends, or perhaps the board and parents can see gain their own perspective and see the forest through the trees. This years calendar was a hard one and the snow days and extra voting days really added to a lot of frustration.

Yes, that's right, there *isn't* research that says random days off will lead to the same learning outcomes as long as you have enough hours.

Both of these studies discuss having enough hours of instruction but ultimately are looking at larger scheduling variations. These studies don't speak to the changes FCPS has made.

Kind of…. But talking about instructional hours IS the way the VDOE has designated looking at the school year AND it is backed by these researchers that hours matter. So that finding is the MOST applicable study available.

You can't change a key variable (consistency) that was not part of the study, and then say that the study is still applicable. It may not be.

The biggest take away from the study is that instructional Hours matter more than how many days per week.

It wasn’t about consistency. There aren’t any studies one way or another about WHICH days of the week kids are in school or if all weeks need to be Monday- Friday (which is impossible anyway with weather delays).

You are acting like there are studies proving 5 day weeks mon-Fri are proven as the best rather than just a construct we have decided upon based on labor laws.

There aren’t studies proving much of anything other than that having kids in school for 180 Days with a focus on instructional hours being paramount is important to make sure kids learn a grade level worth of work. (Which was designed around 180 days of)

You are creating a variable (consistency) of mon-Fri weeks that has never been studied and assuming important because of convention.

[Anonymous]

Yes, let's just count hours. That should work. 12 hour days of instruction, 3 days a week. Makes total sense!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:School board voted down having school on Columbus Day, even though FCPS has more non-5-day weeks than any other large school district in the country

From Melanie Meren's Facebook post, they did vote to have school on Veteran's Day. They also voted to limit half days to 8 days per year (proposal was for 4) -- I am hoping this is a hard limit for all half days because if not, this seems no different than the current situation as elementary kids had 8 3hr early releases this year. I can live with elementary having 4 of the 3 hr early releases in addition to the traditional 2 hr early release for all at the end of the quarter.

The 8 days are the early release days at elem, not the early release days due to quarter end, right?

I'm not sure from her post and I didn't watch the meeting. She said the proposal was amended from 4 early release to 8, so I'm hoping the amending to 8 was to allow for the 4 end of qtr early releases and 4 3hr elementary early releases -- aka someone realized the wording of 4 would mean end of qtr only. I hope it isn't 8 of the 3 hr elementary early releases because that is exactly what they had planned this year (8 elementary ER and the 4 end of qtr) before canceling the April elementary early release.

Based on the discussion, Reid is more likely to remove end of quarter early releases before she removed 3 hour early release dates. She didn’t see much of a point for the end of quarter releases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, let's just count hours. That should work. 12 hour days of instruction, 3 days a week. Makes total sense!

Let’s just do 990 straight. We’ll knock it all out in one go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No way, I love the days off and what they represent. Most secondary parents like them, whether they care about the holidays off or not.

Good to know you don't value education. Most. parents and teacher do.

NP. We do value education. Our kids are taking a lot of AP classes and are using these upcoming 3 days off to prepare. (Monday, Fri and 4/21) We don’t need childcare anymore. We understand why you are so frustrated because it disrupted our kids terribly when they were little as well. Now they can use that time to prepare and study, more similar to what they will do in the near future in college. In college they are not sitting in classrooms for 7 hours M-F.

+1 this exactly. We absolutely love it for our high schooler. They are going to be well prepared for their AP exams!

Agree and we have a middle-schooler!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No way, I love the days off and what they represent. Most secondary parents like them, whether they care about the holidays off or not.

Good to know you don't value education. Most. parents and teacher do.

EWTF are you talking about. The number of instruction days don't change. If you really value education, your kid would use these extra days to study.

I suspect what you are really upset by is the disruption in CPS daycare for your children.

Well, you're suspicions are completely wrong. Don't need child care, couldn't care less about it.

I want my kid in school 5 days a week, not taking off every random day. Your comment about the "number of instruction days" shows how little you think about this problem.

Why? Seriously, why do you think a 5 day week is important? Before labor laws we had a 6 day week. Why not that?

DP. A five day week is important for lots of reasons. I was an elementary teacher and it is disruptive to have odd days off here and there.

Most classes follow a schedule. This means that the "specials" (music, art, pe, etc) get thrown off. Frequent Mondays off, mean that some kids get cheated out of a special. Same with other isolated days. Early release also throws a monkey wrench into the schedule.

And, not only does it throw off the specials, it can also affect the kids who have IEPs and have special help on a schedule.

And, it affects the regular academic scheduling within a class.

It is extremely disruptive for the students and their families.
Not to mention people taking extra days off to travel, because "after all, they are already missing Friday, so we'll take Thursday, as well."

I teach high school, and we think 4-day weeks are better. In fact, studies show that. We are losing kids left and right who just stop attending because they can't stand the grind and don't have enough time off to complete all the assignments. Plus, a lot of them work and that one day can make the difference between having enough food or not, and dropping out of high school or not. Funny how everyone in elementary doesn't realize there are other people out there with different needs than them.

I have one of each. High school didn’t have the Wednesday early releases. This prop for high school do not out weigh elementary. It is also four year versus seven! There are more kids in elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No way, I love the days off and what they represent. Most secondary parents like them, whether they care about the holidays off or not.

Good to know you don't value education. Most. parents and teacher do.

EWTF are you talking about. The number of instruction days don't change. If you really value education, your kid would use these extra days to study.

I suspect what you are really upset by is the disruption in CPS daycare for your children.

Well, you're suspicions are completely wrong. Don't need child care, couldn't care less about it.

I want my kid in school 5 days a week, not taking off every random day. Your comment about the "number of instruction days" shows how little you think about this problem.

Why? Seriously, why do you think a 5 day week is important? Before labor laws we had a 6 day week. Why not that?

DP. A five day week is important for lots of reasons. I was an elementary teacher and it is disruptive to have odd days off here and there.

Most classes follow a schedule. This means that the "specials" (music, art, pe, etc) get thrown off. Frequent Mondays off, mean that some kids get cheated out of a special. Same with other isolated days. Early release also throws a monkey wrench into the schedule.

And, not only does it throw off the specials, it can also affect the kids who have IEPs and have special help on a schedule.

And, it affects the regular academic scheduling within a class.

It is extremely disruptive for the students and their families.
Not to mention people taking extra days off to travel, because "after all, they are already missing Friday, so we'll take Thursday, as well."

I teach high school, and we think 4-day weeks are better. In fact, studies show that. We are losing kids left and right who just stop attending because they can't stand the grind and don't have enough time off to complete all the assignments. Plus, a lot of them work and that one day can make the difference between having enough food or not, and dropping out of high school or not. Funny how everyone in elementary doesn't realize there are other people out there with different needs than them.

I have one of each. High school didn’t have the Wednesday early releases. This prop for high school do not out weigh elementary. It is also four year versus seven! There are more kids in elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No way, I love the days off and what they represent. Most secondary parents like them, whether they care about the holidays off or not.

Good to know you don't value education. Most. parents and teacher do.

NP. We do value education. Our kids are taking a lot of AP classes and are using these upcoming 3 days off to prepare. (Monday, Fri and 4/21) We don’t need childcare anymore. We understand why you are so frustrated because it disrupted our kids terribly when they were little as well. Now they can use that time to prepare and study, more similar to what they will do in the near future in college. In college they are not sitting in classrooms for 7 hours M-F.

+1 this exactly. We absolutely love it for our high schooler. They are going to be well prepared for their AP exams!

Agree and we have a middle-schooler!

No, the high school kids are less prepared.

Most of them checked out back in the early winter after so many 3 day weeks.

They aren't spending all those 3 day weeks studying on the free days, fyi.

[Anonymous]

Not all elementary parents want more school. Plenty of us want those days off. School is genuinely grueling for young kids and they need the recovery time. Not everyone sees school as free daycare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not all elementary parents want more school. Plenty of us want those days off. School is genuinely grueling for young kids and they need the recovery time. Not everyone sees school as free daycare.

Elementary school is not “grueling”, stop it, lazy bones