The Impact of Year-Round Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mandatory School Calendar Conversions

Abstract

In 2007, 22 Wake County, North Carolina traditional calendar schools were switched to year-round calendars, spreading the 180 instructional days evenly across the year. This paper presents a human capital model to illustrate the conditions under which these calendars might affect achievement. We then exploit the natural experiment to evaluate the impact of year-round schooling on student achievement using a multi-level fixed effects model. Results suggest that yearround schooling has essentially no impact on academic achievement of the average student. Moreover, when the data are broken out by race, we find no evidence that any racial subgroup benefits from year-round schooling. (JEL H75, I21, I28, J24)S ummer vacation, a much anticipated three-month break from school, has long been a staple of the US education system. Recent concern over tightening budgets and summer learning loss, however, has led to growing discussion over the merits of "modified" year-round school calendars. Such calendars spread the same number of school days over a longer period, effectively breaking up the long summer break into four or more smaller breaks throughout the year. 1 According to the National Association of Year-Round Education, over two million students attended a year-round school in 2007. 2 This number, about 4 percent of all US students, represents a marked increase from the 360,000 students (roughly 0.7 percent of all US students) who attended a year-round school in 1986. 3 While the number of year-round schools is on the rise, there is currently little consensus on the relative benefit (or cost) such a schedule affords. Rather, calendar conversions have 1 Thus, this type of year-round calendar is different from the "extended year" calendar, where the number of instructional days is increased.

Knowledge decay between semesters

“…The result concurs with findings in the work of McMullen and Rouse (2012) where the negative impact of a longer gap due to potential summer learning loss in K-12 disappears with the inclusion of student fixed effects, and suggests that the bulk of the estimates of summer learning loss are due to differences in selection into the treatment.…”

“…We find that, on average, grades are no different for sequences taken fall-spring instead of spring-fall. In addition to providing new evidence on knowledge decay in higher education, we confirm the importance of controlling for student fixed effects shown by McMullen and Rouse (2012) in elementary and middle school. Even with a wide set of controls, traits associated with longer delays may also be associated with lower grades.…”

“…She remains unable to control for student-level unobservables as she does not observe the same student operating under both environments. However, McMullen and Rouse (2012) observe exactly that: they use a natural experiment in North Carolina with student fixed effects and find zero impact from year-round schools. Schools adopted year-round schooling in a mandatory and staggered manner reducing policy endogeneity concerns.…”

“…However, this effect disappears with the inclusion of student-level fixed effects. Only one previous study (McMullen and Rouse, 2012) has been able to estimate knowledge decay both with and without student level fixed effects. Like them, we find that knowledge decay found in the baseline estimates are driven by student-level differences, not the time lapsed between the courses.…”

“…Only one previous study, McMullen and Rouse (2012) incorporates student fixed effects. A lingering concern in their study is that some schools may be more able to adapt successfully to the new schedule, and that the change in student learning is capturing otherwise unobserved traits of the school.…”