Year-round schooling will bridge the achievement gap for minority students and students with disabilities

Studies have found that disadvantaged students lose about 27 percent more of their learning gains in the summer months than their peers.^[1] Researcher Daniel O’Brien claims that minority students progress their learning proficiency the fastest during the school year when compared to white and economically advantaged students. Furthermore, Anna Habash of Education Trust, a non-profit that works with schools to better serve their student populations, says that for minorities a year-round school schedule does more than help academically. In an interview with Education News, Habash claims that schools with high numbers of poverty and minority students benefit greatly from year-round schooling because it keeps students “on task” and leads to more “meaningful instruction” when there are not a lot of academically sound options at home.^[2] Minorities also drop-out of high school at rates that are higher than their white counterparts. According to Jessica Washington of Politic365, the solution is year-round schooling. She reports that the national dropout rate is 5 percent, while the dropout rate for year-round school students is just 2 percent.^[3] The reasons dropout rates are lower in year-round setups are because students have less time to adjust to time off from school and, in the case of high schoolers, they have less time to work. While this inability for teenagers to work and make money in the summer has been cited as a pitfall of year-round schooling, the disadvantages of this are short-lived. High school graduates earn $11,000 more per year than those with a G.E.D. or less, and that number rises to $36,000 more with a bachelor’s degree. Giving up a few summers of minimum wage work in exchange for the higher lifetime earnings a high school diploma affords is a small price to pay.

[P1] Year-long schooling helps close the achievement gap for minority students.