Sunday, March 22, 2020

Year Round Education Essays - Youth, , Term Papers

Year Round Education Imagine a child, on a hot summer day... no baseball, no swimming, no picnics or amusement park rides. Instead of spending time doing all of the things kids like to during summer vacations, this child, is attending school. Year round education (YRE) has been around since 1904, with 3,000 schools and 2 million students currently using the program (National Association). Students in year round schools go to school the same 180 days that traditional schools attend. In YRE, the summer vacation is eliminated, replacing it with shorter, more frequent breaks. There is a number of ways the year round school can operate, including: 90/30, 45/15, and 60/20. The most popular of these calendars is the 45/15, where the year is divided into 4 nine week terms, separated by 4 three week vacations (National Association). YRE has been a debated issue in education almost since it began. Supporters of YRE say this schedule improves the learning process. The biggest debate, however, comes from the parents and teachers who believe there are no proven studies that YRE helps the learning process at all. So, is year round schooling a good choice for the education of your children? YRE will not only hurt the education system, but it will create chaos for the lives of the students attending and their families. Supporters of YRE believe year round schools are more cost effective than traditional schools. With population in some districts rising rapidly, YRE is said to reduce overcrowding of schools and classrooms. In many cases, school calendars are changed in response to population growth. By running schools all year, districts can pack in more students and postpone building new schools (Endless Summer). Supporters of YRE say that by staggering vacations and schedules, schools can increase capacity by 25-50 percent (Should Kids go). Supporters argue that the costs for the transition form a traditional calendar to year round schools are modest compared to the construction costs of new schools (Inger, Morton). However, those against YRE feel that expenses will only be reduced temporarily. According to a "Year Round Education Study" conducted by the Lewisville, Texas Independent School District, "Findings of a year-long study concluded that there is no financial benefit to operating a Single Track System. The system would cause a modest increase in operational expenses without providing any instructional benefits" (Time to Learn). In Iowa, the Carroll School Board found that the costs of the district moving to a year round education system could range from $16,786 to $32,412. Taylor Elementary School, in Cedar Rapids, spends more money according to the classroom teachers that any other elementary school. Schools in Davenport reported that the switch to YRE will cost an additional $36,000 in salaries, $3000 per year for equipment, and supplies, and $22,300 as a one time expense for teacher training. Plus, the move to YRE would also cost the district an extra $92,626 to fully air condition the school building. In Des Moines, Moulten schools spend about $80,000 annually for year round schooling. If YRE were implemented, Indianola school districts would spend an additional $3,655 for middle school and $5,000 for elementary school to pay for the additional secretarial, administrative, and custodial time during the summer (Time to Learn). Costs will not only be incurred with the schools, but also with the state and with taxpayers. Cost savings for one of these groups may create cost increases for the other (Naylor, Charlie). Contrary to what supporters of YRE claim, there are definitely extra costs to implementing and maintaining a year round education system. Supporters of YRE say that year round schools would promote continuous learning. The belief is that students forget a lot of what they learn while on long summer vacations. This is seen more in slower learning students and for those who know English as their second language. It is also thought that because students retain more when the learning process is interrupted for only short periods of time, teachers in year round schools need to spend less time reviewing pre-vacation material (Inger, Morton). Although this seems true, opponents believe that there is research that needs to be addressed. Mary Lee Smith and Gene V. Glass have done extensive research in year round schools since 1974. In a study conducted by Smith and Glass, in a school district in Colorado, the learning loss in the students was evaluated. They found that although teachers in year round schools spent less time reviewing pre-vacation material than teachers in traditional schools did, the actual achievement differences were insignificant on tests designed specifically

Thursday, March 5, 2020

Free Essays on Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a great mathematician who lived in 17th Century France. His mother was Antoinette Begon; she died when Blaise was three. His father, Etienne took the responsibility of bringing him up. Pascal had two sisters, Gilberte and Jacqueline. Pascal began his studies in 1635 with his reading of Euclid’s Elements and mastered them by age 12. This won the boy respect for his great talent in mathematics. Pascal in fact did not attend school; instead, Etienne brought him to lectures and mathematical gatherings at the â€Å"Academie Parsienne† nearly from its founding. At the early age of 16, Pascal began to play an active role in â€Å"Academie Parisienne†. There, Pascal became the principal disciple of Girard Desargues, a professor working there because he was the only one who appreciated his work in geometry. Pascal began work on conics and published several papers to do with geometry. In fact, in June 1639, Pascal has already made a significant discovery with his â€Å"mystical hexagram†. In 1641, he began to suffer from problems of health that delayed his research for a year, but he recovered and continued his work. In 1642, Pascal began to create a machine that would be similar to an everyday calculator to help his father with his accounting job. His first attempts were failures and Pascal was discouraged from working on the project for many years. He returned to it in 1644 because of the encouragement of many people. He finished the final model in 1645 after going through more than 50 incarnations of the design, he finished the final model in 1645, Pascal himself did the selling with a few associates but because of it’s high price of and limited uses, sales were probably modest. He did present one to Queen Christina of Sweden and he was allowed a monopoly over it by royal decree. Although Pascal had been raised as a Catholic, later in his life, Pascal had been converted to Jansenism in 1646 and moved to a monastery i... Free Essays on Blaise Pascal Free Essays on Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal was a great mathematician who lived in 17th Century France. His mother was Antoinette Begon; she died when Blaise was three. His father, Etienne took the responsibility of bringing him up. Pascal had two sisters, Gilberte and Jacqueline. Pascal began his studies in 1635 with his reading of Euclid’s Elements and mastered them by age 12. This won the boy respect for his great talent in mathematics. Pascal in fact did not attend school; instead, Etienne brought him to lectures and mathematical gatherings at the â€Å"Academie Parsienne† nearly from its founding. At the early age of 16, Pascal began to play an active role in â€Å"Academie Parisienne†. There, Pascal became the principal disciple of Girard Desargues, a professor working there because he was the only one who appreciated his work in geometry. Pascal began work on conics and published several papers to do with geometry. In fact, in June 1639, Pascal has already made a significant discovery with his â€Å"mystical hexagram†. In 1641, he began to suffer from problems of health that delayed his research for a year, but he recovered and continued his work. In 1642, Pascal began to create a machine that would be similar to an everyday calculator to help his father with his accounting job. His first attempts were failures and Pascal was discouraged from working on the project for many years. He returned to it in 1644 because of the encouragement of many people. He finished the final model in 1645 after going through more than 50 incarnations of the design, he finished the final model in 1645, Pascal himself did the selling with a few associates but because of it’s high price of and limited uses, sales were probably modest. He did present one to Queen Christina of Sweden and he was allowed a monopoly over it by royal decree. Although Pascal had been raised as a Catholic, later in his life, Pascal had been converted to Jansenism in 1646 and moved to a monastery i...