Reply to MCPS School Year Extended by One Day to June 17; Final Three Days of the School Year Now Early Release Days

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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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]By adding 3 half days at the end of the year when seniors are done, AP tests are long over, and camps will have begun, it's basically a big F** to the State (for not waiving) 2 days![/quote]

It’s a big FU at the parents.  They could have cancelled one of the professional development days after the snow days…[/quote]

No it’s not. If anything, the only people who really need to go Monday and Tuesday are teachers and they already sorta knew that when the year was previously extended to the Monday. If you need childcare coverage those half days, send your kid. If you don’t or it’s easier for you to arrange full day coverage elsewhere, don’t send them. If you want to travel that week, they’ve all but given their blessing to proceed with previously made plans. There will not be teaching and learning those days whether you send your kids or not. If you’re looking for childcare ideas there will be lots of 14/15 year olds who are kind of too old for camp but too young for jobs who would probably happily babysit your kids in the afternoon for some Apple cash. [/quote]

This isn't about childcare coverage you dismissive fool, it's about wanting kids to learn.  180 days a year is already less than what other countries provide their elementary/secondary students, and we lose so much of it with this half day garbage, testing for MAP, MCAP, in-school days when teachers are grading and turn on videos etc...[/quote]

+1 honestly how can people not see the connection between all this and our disgraceful literacy rates. I guess y'all are too busy blaming immigrants for your failures.[/quote]
So your contention is that if our school year had been originally scheduled at 184 days, and we didn’t have to make up any snow days, we’d have higher literacy rates? If that’s not your point, then stop proclaiming that other people don’t get the connection between your much broader argument about school calendars in general, just because they’re commenting specifically on the days recently added to *MCPS’s 2024-2025 school year*.[/quote]. Many posters are clearly advocating for less instructional time, and against being required to spend time educating children. Disgusting .[/quote]
The argument isn’t that we have too much instructional time and should decrease it; the argument is that tacking on two days at the end doesn’t actually allow for making up instructional time that was lost months earlier. Teachers had to rush through material and move on back in January and February. By June 13th, they’ve covered all the material. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing more that can be taught — but it does mean that whatever they could attempt to teach at that point isn’t part of the curriculum, so it would just be two days of ad hoc lessons for the few kids who show up. It’s not going to move the needle on kids’ academic progress.[/quote]

So to review with the current calendar and this year's snow days you had to "rush" to cover material. And you don't see any value to adding time to the school year because not every student will show up and each teacher will have to decide what to cover.

Do you not see then that MCPS needs to build more school days into the calendar in order to:
- meet the state requirement 
- cover all the material and
- have students present to learn the material?

Afaik teachers haven't advocated for this though.

So zero sympathy.[/quote]
I’m the pp you’re replying to. I’m just a parent, not a teacher or an MCPS employee. I was explaining why tacking days onto the end of the year, after the entire curriculum has been covered, doesn’t make up for lost instructional time from months earlier. I have long advocated both starting school earlier in August and building more than 2 snow days into the calendar.

But just as some of us would prefer to start earlier, others strongly oppose an earlier start. There isn’t universal agreement on when to start, how long summer break should be, which religious holidays should not be instructional days, etc. I don’t think teachers are a monolith; I’m sure they also have different calendar preferences. However, I seriously doubt most of them prefer tacking on makeup days to the end of the school year over having more of them built into the calendar.

You’re just being argumentative and targeting teachers. They don’t propose or approve the calendar. They didn’t choose the minimum number of mandated instructional days. They didn’t impose the requirements for assessments. They are subject to a rigid framework. Most of them would love more flexibility to tinker with lesson plans to suit their students’ needs.[/quote]

In other words, MCPS is incapable of making the decisions that are best for kids because the adults are too whiny.[/quote]
What you call whiny, I’d call a lack of consensus among stakeholders, but that’s just one of the confounding factors. They also have to take into consideration state mandated holidays, required assessments, employment contracts, employee morale and retention, budget constraints, likelihood of inclement weather.[/quote]
As well as the land mine presented by religious holidays.[/quote]

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