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

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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No one is thinking about the low income and ESL students who need consistent support to make progress against their educational goals. 
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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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]
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.  [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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:

[i]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.[/i]

Either way FCPS has a 5 day a week calendar.  [b]There isn’t much research about days off during the week[/b], 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. [/quote]

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. [i]These studies don't speak to the changes FCPS has made[/i].[/quote]

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.
[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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