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I may not beable to quote actual studies, but I witness first hand the
amount of learning kids loose every year. I teach seocndary ESL. It used
to be just teacher observation, now I have hard concrete data. Due to a
grant that we get, I must test all my students at the begining of the year
and at the end of the year. My gut instinct that they were loosing months
of learning was accurate, the drop is horrendous. We have been under this
grant for awhile now so I have numerous years data. This is not a one time
occurance, it happens everysingle year. I compared results with the
elementary ESL teacher and found the results even worse there.

We have a school board member who is starting to talk about it. Due to my
first hand observations, I will support any and all attempts to change our
calendar. Will this eliminate the need for remediation, NO. Will it reduce
the amount needed, I believe YES.

By the way as more and more schools fail AYP for the 3rd, 4th and 5th year,
you may hear more about this in alot of schools because when I attended our
state's "You failed AYP one too many times" meeting; One of the items
listed as possible "changes/reforms/modifications/punishments" for failing
the fourth and fifth year was lengthening the school day or year and/or
modifying the school calendar. If you haven't ever looked at what can
happen if your school does not meet AYP the 4th and 5th year in a row, you
need to.

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