Year-round school gains ground around U.S.

Two days before Thanksgiving, the Indianapolis School Board will make a decision sure to heat up discussion around the turkey in just about every home with young children. That's when board members will vote on whether to adopt year-round classes.

If the board approves the measure, Indianapolis pupils would go to school in cycles of eight to 10 weeks, with three to five weeks off after each, throughout the year. That would put them among the growing number of children around the nation who are going to school on so-called balanced schedules.

Indianapolis Superintendent Eugene White said the schedule would add 20 class days every year, giving pupils more time to learn and shorter periods away from the classroom to forget what they've studied. For both teachers and students, the shorter but more frequent breaks will "give them some kind of relief and (allow them to) come back more invigorated," he said.

That's important in a district criticized for low standardized-test scores and high dropout rates, said board member Annie Roof, because "what we are doing isn't working."

Administrators and the teachers union are united behind the proposal, said Ann Wilkins, president of the Indiana Educators Association.

"Instead of us saying, 'OK, he didn't get it — we are going to pass him on,'" the new schedule would give teachers "time to do the interventions and remediation we need to do as educators," she said.

10 percent by 2012?
If the board approves, Indianapolis will hop on a bandwagon that's quietly rolling across the education landscape.

Ten years ago, according to Education Department statistics, about 1.5 million public school children went to class on a "balanced schedule" — usually shorthanded as YRE, for "year-round education."

Six years ago, that number was up to 2 million. By 2008, nearly 2.5 million pupils were on a YRE plan.

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That's the last year for which official figures are available, but since then, some of the nation's biggest districts have adopted or expanded YRE in their facilities, notably the Chicago Public Schools, and others — including Houston and Indianapolis — could join them next year.

By  2012, education groups estimate, more than 5 million pupils — about 10 percent of all children enrolled in American public schools — could be going to school year-round.

In Chicago, the drive to adopt YRE was championed by Arne Duncan during his term as the school system's chief executive. Duncan is now President Barack Obama's education secretary, and his boss is behind the campaign for year-round learning.

"The idea of a longer school year, I think, makes sense," Obama said in an interview last month on NBC's TODAY. "Students are losing a lot of what they learn during the school year during the summer."

The phenomenon is called "spring slide," a term coined by Doris R. Entwisle, Karl L. Alexander and Linda Steffel Olson of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who have tracked Baltimore schoolchildren since 1982 and have been publishing their findings since 1997.

Challenging some prevalent assumptions, they reported in 2007 that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds make just as much progress during the academic year as better-off children. On standardized reading comprehension tests, students improved by about 195 points regardless which socioeconomic background they come from, low, middle or high, the researchers found.

But in the summer months, kids in the top third economically kept gaining, picking up on average 46.6 points on the reading test. It was a dramatically different story for the less-privileged two-thirds: Kids the middle group gained about 4.5 points on average, while those in the bottom third lost 1.9 points. (Other research has shown similar, though less dramatic, trends in math and science.)

'We don't have them here enough'
Put another way, well-off children — those with access to tutoring and academic camps and travel — keep learning when school's out for the summer, while those without such advantages tread water or even sink.

"Society can't keep saying to schools 'have every kid perform better' when we don't have them here enough," said Charlie Kyte, president of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators. A few Minnesota districts have adopted balanced calendars, and many others are studying the idea.

In Indianapolis, the difference is clear in the small number of schools that are already year-round, said Margaret Silk, a fourth-grade teacher at one of them, Ernie Pyle Elementary School. There, 70 percent of students from low-income families pass their state assessment tests, higher than the Indiana average for all students and well above the average for lower-income students.

Silk said that under the traditional calendar, it took six weeks of reviewing the previous year's lessons just to get her students back up to speed.

"In this calendar, oh, my goodness, (it takes) maybe two weeks at most," she said.

• Vote: Do you support a longer school year?

Natasha Flowers, an assistant education professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said the year-round classes make a significant difference to children who are at the most risk — those from families that "don't have resources to do lots of academic enriching during the summer."

That's especially important as the federal No Child Left Behind program requires kids to master more material by the time they graduate. Educators like Mike Ginalski, superintendent of schools in Corning, N.Y., say it's getting harder to "cram all of the curriculum in basically a nine- to 10-month period of time."

"There are children that can always benefit from more time and more support that they receive daily in school," Ginalski said.

So why isn't year-round education taking root even faster?

For one thing, it's not just pupils who don't like the idea of sitting in class all day in the middle of summer. Public opinion polling has consistently shown that a majority of American adults oppose mandatory summer classes, too.

The most recent poll, by Rasmussen Reports in July, found that adults opposed a year-round calendar by 63 percent to 31 percent — about the same ratio as other surveys taken in recent years. (The Rasmussen poll reported a margin of sampling error of 3 percentage points.) Tips from the man who lives without money Updated 52 minutes ago 10/27/2010 4:22:26 PM +00:00 Slackers or 'saners'? Ralliers say they aren't just kidding around First rescuers reach scene of deadly tsunami Victim was thrilled to date ‘Hiccup Girl’ Richards on Sheen: ‘I have faith in my ex’

Specifically, 71 percent of adults — parents and non-parents alike — said in the most recent poll that children learn valuable life lessons during long summer breaks, by going to camp or by taking temporary jobs. And at public hearings recently in Indianapolis, some parents complained that summer classes would complicate their family vacation plans.

But the big objection boils down to this:

"Show me the money," Randy J. Greene, superintendent of schools in Paducah, Ky., said when the idea was raised there after Obama's comments last month.

Year-round buses and lunches and after-school tutoring programs cost more, Greene said, and parents are already unhappy about a 4 percent increase in property taxes to cover the $300,000 cut in state funding that hit the district this year.

The cost concern is playing out differently in Las Vegas, where the Clark County School Board — facing a $30 million shortfall in its budget thanks to reduced state funding and declining property tax revenue — voted in April to abandon a year-round calendar and return to the traditional three-month summer break. The new calendar was projected to save the district about $13.8 million.

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Marcie McDonald, principal of Squires Elementary School, said she understood that the board had to try to balance its smaller budget. But she said doing so would come at a real cost.

Ninety-two percent of McDonald's pupils are Latino, and for two-thirds of them, English is their second language.

"Our little ones are learning language," McDonald said. "They go home and listen to their primary language of their home for three months and come back. And having not used English for three months — that poses another concern or problem."

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Slackers or 'saners'? Ralliers say they aren't just kidding around

WASHINGTON — They’re reasonable, they’re lucid, and, damn it, they want their voices heard.
At a moderate conversational level, of course.

On Saturday, tens of thousands of activists and fans are expected to rally on the National Mall at the urging of two cable television comedians whose combined nightly viewership is somewhere south of a primetime repeat of FOX’s “The Simpsons.”
The message of Comedy Central “fake news” personalities Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert blends an ironic dig at political extremism of all stripes, a meeting of generally left-of-center minds, smarty-pants jabs at national media coverage, and a heartfelt – if jokey – appeal for more rational discourse in American politics.

The details of the Oct. 30 rally remain fuzzy – it’s unclear who Stewart and Colbert’s “special guests” will be – but estimates indicate that Comedy Central is expecting 150,000 attendees. The president of the United States has implicitly endorsed the spirit of the event, and even plans a  stopover on Stewart's show on the eve of the event. Oprah Winfrey is a fan . And some expected attendees are pushing back hard on the hypothesis that the enormous majority of demonstrators will be politically apathetic young people who merely mosey across the Potomac River from convenient Maryland and Virginia suburbs to check out the festivities -- and wash down a few beers while they’re at it.

Slackers or 'saners'? Ralliers say they aren't just kidding around Updated 53 minutes ago 10/27/2010 4:22:26 PM +00:00 They’re reasonable, they’re lucid, and, damn it, they want their voices heard. At a moderate conversational level, of course.

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So, are the self-described “saners” a political force to be reckoned with, a headache for Democrats desperate to mobilize their base, or merely a collection of devoted slackers seeking a snicker at the Tea Party’s expense?

'I want to go be counted' Loretta Humble says she is making the 1,300-mile drive from eastern Texas to Washington, D.C., because she’s simply “tired of all the yelling.”

She hardly fits the Stewart/Colbert fan caricature — usually some variation of a skinny-jeaned East Coast college kid whose liberal political views are mainly vehicles for poking fun at “old people” and preaching the injustice of criminalized marijuana use. (Bill O’Reilly, the famed FOX News host and object of Colbert’s lampooned affection, once derided the Comedy Central demographic as “ stoned slackers .”)

Humble, on the other hand, is a septuagenarian who co-owns and operates a nursing home in Malakoff, Texas (population: 2,257).

An avid watcher of Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and Colbert’s spin-off “The Colbert Report,” which debuted in October 2005, Humble says that the two comedians’ knack for poking fun at the sheer nastiness of political discourse gives voice to a sentiment that the majority of Americans share.

And they’re no slackers, she says.

“All of a sudden, we said, ‘I want to go be counted,’” Humble said of the rally’s devotees. “’I want to be there and be counted as somebody who is tired of all the meanness, tired of the ranting and biting back and forth in both directions.’”

Marching on Washington is nothing new for another participant, Alison Reardon, a longtime labor activist who says she will be attending the rally with family as well as friends from her far-flung home state of Alaska.
Reardon, who lives in D.C., will march with her 80-year-old mother, who is traveling from North Carolina for the event. The pair last demonstrated together during the Vietnam era. Reardon said that she’s hoping this event will evoke a similar debate about the direction of the country.

“If this is just a merchandizing ploy, that’s not what I’m doing this for,” she said. “What I would like is a real march like those in the 60’s ... where we talk about why we’re striving for a better society, one that’s inclusive.”

Humble and Reardon are both active participants on the Stewart “Rally to Restore Sanity” Facebook page, which serves as a thriving message board for attendees and enthusiasts who swap thoughts on sign ideas, news nuggets, advice on where to stay and how to get around D.C., and even musings on what to wear.

Postings on the site generally mirror the left-of-center leanings of the two shows. (A Pew study in 2007 showed that the GOP was the target of Stewart’s jokes almost three times more often than Democrats over the course of a year.)

But the community can also be gently self-policing. Anti-GOP posts that are peppered with obscenities tend to receive comments urging the poster – borrowing the rhetoric of the rally – to “take it down a notch.”

Is this a joke?
If the two comedians needed confirmation that the Washington, D.C., establishment isn’t quite sure what to make of them, the reaction to Colbert’s Sept. 24 testimony at a Capitol Hill subcommittee hearing probably did the trick. At the invitation of the panel’s Democratic chairman, Colbert appeared in character as a brash, self-absorbed conservative blowhard with a predilection for potty jokes. The No. 2 Democrat in the House called Colbert’s appearance on behalf of migrant farm workers “ an embarrassment”; prominent pundits debated the appropriateness of the joke, most labeling it unfunny and disrespectful.

(The goofy testimony wasn’t the first time that Colbert rubbed the D.C. crowd the wrong way. He performed at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, an annual black-tie event attended by the nation’s top political journalists and then-President George W. Bush. His searing critiques of the press and politics were received with scattered awkward giggles by the live audience, for whom the banter might have struck too close to home. The taped appearance became an online phenomenon, with almost 3 million YouTube views in less than 48 hours.)

But while Colbert and the somewhat less acerbic Stewart may not always get laughs from the political class, it’s indisputable that they’ve become relevant stops on the popular media circuit for political figures hoping to reach a certain type of audience.

Stewart’s TV schtick is a cocktail of the host’s self-deprecating banter, jocular lampooning of the political process and the class of journalists who cover it, and his generally earnest – if typically laced with silliness – interviews with newsmakers and entertainers of all kinds.

This month alone, Stewart’s guests have ranged from pop supernova Justin Timberlake, to human piñata and “Jackass” creator Johnny Knoxville, to Republican House Minority whip Rep. Eric Cantor, and former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

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Obama’s appearance on Wednesday will be his first since taking the reins as commander in chief.
Colbert, for his part, has interviewed Gov. Mike Huckabee, Bob Dole, Ron Paul, and a plethora of congressional candidates through his heavily edited (and often cringe-inducing) “ Better Know a District” series. During the 2008 presidential primary, Democratic candidates John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and

Obama made brief guest appearances in one episode.

Who’s watching?
Few relevant politicos go out of their way to make TV appearances just for giggles. Most have their eyes on the shows’ high levels of viewership by a key but difficult-to-mobilize bloc of educated young people. The programs’ ratings with the elusive demographic of young people age 18-34 are high; the numbers with young men specifically are even higher.

A frequently cited 2004 study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that about 20 percent of people under age 30 said that they regularly learned something about the presidential campaign from comedy shows like The Daily Show. Fully half of young people said that they at least sometimes picked up new information about the campaign from the programs.

And — according to the surprising amount of scholarly work that has been conducted on the fake news shows — when they learn it, they appear to hold on to it.

A 2004 study conducted at Indiana University showed that The Daily Show, on average, featured no less “substance” — information about the issues and policy preferences of candidates and political parties — than network news shows.

In a follow-up study, the team led by assistant professor Julia Fox found that viewers were more likely to remember sound bites presented in Stewart’s comedic format than those aired on more traditional broadcasts.

In other words, if you watched similar reports on Stewart’s program and a network news program, says Fox, “you’d be presented with equivalent information, but you’d probably actually learn more from The Daily Show.”

So, do they vote?
Reardon, the labor activist, says that she has been contacted about the rally by friends around the country who are eager to attend. “They’re all very engaged,” she said. “They’re all informed voters.”

Research shows that’s an accurate picture. Regular viewers of the two comedy shows scored in the highest percentile in the 2007 Pew study that measured knowledge of current events. Those who knew the least?
Viewers of network morning shows, local broadcasts, and FOX News.

“There’s nothing to suggest that these viewers are disengaged from the political process,” said Fox, the Indiana University professor.

Reardon believes that the rally’s energy could re-activate Democrats who became politically involved during Obama’s presidential campaign but have been frustrated with Republican obstruction of his change agenda.

“A lot of the people that are coming are the same people who got engaged with Obama and are angry or disappointed, and they’ve had no place to show it,” said Reardon, who added that attendees have been using online message boards to encourage each other to vote early before they head to Washington.

Humble said that — even though she is hugely outnumbered as a Democratic leaner in overwhelmingly Republican Henderson County — she has already cast her ballot in the state’s less competitive races because she has always viewed voting as a civic duty.

That’s a sentiment that she thinks most of her fellow “saners” share.

“There are some kids that are going to want to come to [the rally] to party, sure,” she said. “But for the most part, these are people that really would like to be idealistic, who really believe that something could be right. They’re tired of being discouraged.”

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