180 day school year obsolete??

[4wildberrys]

180-day school year??

Wow---this is a LOT harder to get done and schedule than I thought. Especially considering the local school system has a 4-day week from about late Aug until 3rd week of May----with teacher in-service days, half days, all major and minor holidays still taken. That turns out to be less than 140 days of actual school work! :glare:

 

If we start in mid August, do 6 weeks on/1 week off until Thanksgiving, taking a full week, 2 weeks off for Christmas and then continue 6 weeks on and 1 week off until mid to late June---that is the ONLY schedule that will fit those full 180 day SL schedule of work. Am I the only one that does every day of work??? I just feel SO pressured to cut days and hours----but I don't see how. And I simply do NOT understand how the school systems can get away with so little work these days. And to top it off, the public school kids here can score relatively low on their ACT, and have their transcript automatically accepted for the state University we are looking at----but WE have additional hoops and tests to take for admission. I don't even think they will LOOK at the transcript I have diligently created. Grrr. It just kind of burns me up, now that dd is going through admission process, at just HOW much harder we actually work than the public school and yet we still have to 'prove' our worth...

[April in CA]

You are not the only one! We do more than 180 days of school, and there is something going in the summer as well - usually math. Hard work now will pay off later. Your children will more prepared than their peers and will perform better in college. My older son just finished his freshman year of college and says the rigors of our homeschool prepared him very well for the rigors of college work. Plus, he can educate himself from a textbook - a skill which comes in mighty handy! Keep it up! Don't grow weary in doing well, for we shall reap a harvest if we faint not! Wise words, and true!

Blessings,

April

[Brindee]

Since my oldest went to a Christian Boarding High School when he was a Junior (4 years ago), we've followed more of a school schedule so the one(s) at home could have time off when the one(s) at school did and were home.

 

We do 5 days a week, but Friday is a shorter day. We take Thanksgiving, Christmas and Spring breaks. Thanksgiving is usually Tuesday or Wednesday through the rest of the week. Christmas is about 2 weeks, and Spring break is close to 2 weeks, sometimes a little less. That gives us plenty of time to get in the hours we need. Sometimes we'll take a part day to do other things, but we get in plenty of hours.

[Julie in MN]

Especially considering the local school system has a 4-day week from about late Aug until 3rd week of May----with teacher in-service days, half days, all major and minor holidays still taken. That turns out to be less than 140 days of actual school work! :glare:

 

We follow a public school calendar and stick to it. So sometimes I have to either squish or drop. The school we're following this year has 172 days -- but then there was the day they closed for a gas leak, and the week they had half-days "in case" someone was taking any of the standardized tests, and and and...

 

I find most homeschool curriculum can still be done in a public school year. Our TT math is 115 lessons plus 15 tests. Our MFW is 36 weeks with light Fridays. Most science is about 160 days or so.

 

And most public school materials are probably not designed to be done cover-to-cover. Ps teachers tend to pick-n-choose. Or some, like Jacobs Geometry, expect you to do all the lessons but maybe not all the problems.

 

Julie

[Ecclecticmum]

We have just been doing activties & learning through play and only formally (as in with scheduled curriculum) started a little while ago, we are just doing year round schooling, I believe in making school fun, as to me, learning IS fun, so why do we need to take copious breaks?

 

I found even with doing SL both P cores together plus K language and a whole bunch extra, we still have 5 hours of the afternoon with nothing to do!

 

Today I am trying to go much more slowly....we started late, I have let them carry on for as long as possible with each activity still it starts to wear thin, and added a few craft supplements in between activties, so we will see how we go, but now its me sitting here doing absolutely nothing lol. Whilst they are in there probably gluing themselves to the chairs :lol:

 

When we finish one level of something, we just plan to move on to the next, so we don't schedule when we finish (as in Jul to whatever schoolyear) if its too hard or a bit above them (I know we'll probably get to a stage like that eventually) I will just find a revision or go over course before hopping on to the next level.

 

In all honesty, its ridiculous, thats half the year that they will be forgetting and not learning, so I don't understand it. We just have our days listed from one to 5, and 36 weeks scheduled, and if we don't feel like doing something one day, we'll take a day off, or if we decide to go on holiday next week (yeah right) then we'll just go, but even with many sick days, my CFS, and spur of the moment holidays, I don't see how we could ONLY do 180 days a year lol. :001_huh:

[Rhonda in TX]

Our local school district has 177 days in the school year. I have no idea how many days are early release, but I don't think there are many. I can't imagine trying to fit a year worth's of work in 140 days! I'm scheduling 9th grade right now and it's going to be difficult to fit everything in to our 190 day school year.

[elegantlion]

Our previous state had a 180 day requirement. We tried to follow the public school calendar, they counted teacher in-service days and had about 170 days of class. :glare:

 

We opted to go with an August start date, do 4-6 weeks then take off a week. I like taking more full weeks off as a day here or there messes with our momentum.

[EKS]

I simply do NOT understand how the school systems can get away with so little work these days.

 

Me too! I wish the school year was at least 200 days.

[Teachin'Mine]

You're not alone. We do 180 days too - and it is hard to fit it all in. :tongue_smilie:

[FloridaLisa]

I must be lacking a serious planning gene. :tongue_smilie:

 

I have never, not once, counted our school days. We just keep going until it's done. We start finishing some books in early April, while some leak over into summer. <------------ This tends to be the math text in high school!

 

My hat's off to you uber-planners!

Lisa

[Halcyon]

We don't count days either, but given that we school year round, we probably actually school about 200 to 220 days a year.

[Teachin'Mine]

I must be lacking a serious planning gene. :tongue_smilie:

 

I have never, not once, counted our school days. We just keep going until it's done. We start finishing some books in early April, while some leak over into summer. <------------ This tends to be the math text in high school!

 

My hat's off to you uber-planners!

Lisa

 

I've never counted days either. :) I only know that it's 180 days that we do now since that's how the lesson plans we receive are set up - thirty six 5-day weeks. Before following those plans, we worked from the beginning of the book until the end.

[Julie in MN]

I have never, not once, counted our school days.

 

 

My hat's off to you uber-planners!

Lisa

 

Not an uber-planner. Just in direct competition with the friends in public school. I need to establish my ground and keep my boundaries fortified!

[4wildberrys]

I must be lacking a serious planning gene. :tongue_smilie:

 

I have never, not once, counted our school days. We just keep going until it's done. We start finishing some books in early April, while some leak over into summer. <------------ This tends to be the math text in high school!

 

My hat's off to you uber-planners!

Lisa

 

LOL! It's my SL/MFW curriculum plans...NOT me!! :tongue_smilie: The only way I became aware of this disparity of what I am trying to accomplish with my kids and what the local school...apparently doesn't accomplish :glare: Putting stress on ME to release my kids before we complete a year's worth of expensive curriculum. And enriching curriculum. The public school is DONE for the year, and we are at Week 24 in our curriculum. :001_huh:

[Rhonda in TX]

I must be lacking a serious planning gene. :tongue_smilie:

 

I have never, not once, counted our school days. We just keep going until it's done. We start finishing some books in early April, while some leak over into summer. <------------ This tends to be the math text in high school!

 

My hat's off to you uber-planners!

Lisa

 

My ADD-self would spontaneously combust without a plan. One of the smartest purchases I ever made was Homeschool Tracker Plus. If I try to wing it, nothing gets done. Hats off to those who can make that work! :001_smile:

[Ellie]

In Calif, public schools count teacher in-service days as school days, even though no dc show up. The count it as a whole day even if there are dc there for only half a day.

 

Not all states have 180 days, BTW. It varies by state.

[FaithManor]

Homeschoolers in Michigan have no requirements for reporting "days in school." I know many homeschoolers that follow our local public school schedule, which to me, has a lot of wasted time. They take Colmbus Day, Veterans Day (this kind of ticks me off because there are some wonderful history lessons that could be incorrporated into the day), MLK day, Presiden'ts Day, two full weeks at Christmas, three days at Thanksgiving, Good Friday and the Monday after Easter, plus a Friday called Mid-winter break, a week of spring break in March, teacher-in service days each quarter, end of quarter 1/2 days, parent/teacher conference days during the first quarter, and the high school requires that when the MEAPS are administered, only one class (i.e. freshman, etc.) can be testing at one time and the other students must NOT be in the building, so they rotate field trips.

 

In order to meet the 180 day requirement when snow days are so common, many of our local districts hold school until the 3rd week of June. It's hot here by then and the schools are not air conditioned and the students, faculty, and staff are miserable.

 

I've never understood all of those days off. Therefore, we do not follow the p.s. schedule at all. We begin the first week of August, do not take the autumn days off unless someone is sick, have a full week at Thanksgiving and three weeks at Christmas, don't take the winter holidays again unless sick, take half the week off at Easter, and are done by Memorial weekend. I don't count days for the sake of counting days, but in general, we school more than 200 days and during dd's senior year, we hit a high of 220. No one complained. We also do not observe snow days with one caveat. The first major blizzard of the year is a day off if the temperature and wind chill are comfortable enough for the boys to go build snowmen and forts.

 

We've got schools that are going to June 22nd because of making up snow days. The interesting thing is that Michigan allows the counting of "time" instead of days so some schools added 10-15 minutes to the school day beginning April 1st, so they could make it up by educational hours and not extend their school year. Why other districts didn't do this, I don't know. Though, tacking 10-15 minutes onto the end of the day probably doesn't add any educational value for the student.

 

Faith

[Nan in Mass]

Wow. I guess I'm just glad we don't have anything that has 180 days of school scheduled out. We have textbooks (like math and the French history/geography) that have to be finished, but unless the children travel for more than 4 or 6 weeks in the school year, we manage to start a little into Sept. and go until almost the end of June and finish them. The rest (like literature) we adjust to fit into that time. We have school whenever the public school does (except for field trips and traveling and being sick and the occasional family event) and they do extra reading during the summer to ease things a bit and fit in some of the extras. I've actually been pleasantly surprised at how well the textbooks have divided up into our shortened-by-travel school year. I'm not saying we don't feel overwhelmed and like there isn't time for everything we want to do and all that. I'm just saying that we do ok with the public school's schedule, even chopping 5 or 6 weeks out for travel. If they decide to vanish for three months during the school year, we finish the math book in the summer. Which we HATE. : (

-Nan

[Guest MrAlgebra]

Keep in mind that schools in some areas of the world go even longer than that with longer school days. :)

[unsinkable]

In Calif, public schools count teacher in-service days as school days, even though no dc show up. The count it as a whole day even if there are dc there for only half a day.

 

Not all states have 180 days, BTW. It varies by state.

 

NY has 180 days and in high school they have mandatory exams. But each exam day is counted as a school day even tho' the only students who are attending are the ones who are taking the exam.

 

In June, there are 7 days of exams (2 exams/day) but each student doesn't take every exam. But the 7 days are "counted" in the 180 days.

 

In Jan., I think there are only 3 or 4 days of exams b/c not all of the exams are offerend. But still, you only go to school if you are taking an exam.

[KAR120C]

The local schools seem to take off about once a week every week until Christmas when all the snow days start.... :glare:

 

Our house rules are that if DH gets the day off, DS gets the day off, unless he has a big deadline approaching. And if there is snow to play in (not just ice to keep the buses from running) he can go out and take advantage of that until it melts.

 

Other than that, we have a five day week and only take off for Thanksgiving (1 week, but there are two annual science-and-engineering-related "field trips" in those days off... they're not entirely off), Christmas (1-2 weeks, depending on travel), and something for a spring break, although it's not always a whole week.

 

We used to start after Labor Day and end at Memorial Day, but we've moved it to August 1 through the first or second week in June... so by the end of the year we're right about 200 days! Poor kid. LOL I should say, August "ramps up"... so it starts slow and isn't to full schedule until the 3rd or 4th week... and things start winding down at the end of April, so May gets lighter as it goes. Right now we're down to Latin, Spanish, and Science.

[memphispeg]

We are in our 1st year and just have one last chapter of Math.....Dd is taking the SAT2 in Math in June so she wanted to be working a while longer.....I find that I am really looking forward to at least 2 weeks off b4 launching into scheduling next year!!! I'm about burned out!!! Don't know how y'all did this for so many years! One more to go for me. I do love it tho'.

[mom31257]

We are required to do 180 days in GA. My dh is a public school teacher, so I follow his schedule. He has 10 extra days beyond the public school's 180 days of kids actually being there, so it gives us some flexibility.

 

I make 36 folders and plan out their work for 36 weeks. We might finish that work in 4 days because of something we want to do, but it's still 5 day's worth, so 5 days go on the attendance report.

 

Here will be our schedule for next year.

Begin August 1st

Sept -week off, not sure which

Oct - week of the 10th off

Nov - week of Thanksgiving off

Dec/Jan- about 2.5 weeks off but take a couple of field trips

Feb - week of the 20th off

Mar - week off, not sure which

Apr - week of 23rd off

end June 1st

 

If I decide to, we might not take the week off in March and finish up May 25th.

 

Isn't SL planned for 36 weeks? Why not use the 5th day of those weeks for field trips, electives, and such?

[Tullia]

I think the current requirement in NM is 181. It changed from 180 sometime while my son was in high school, but I didn't pay a lot of attention since we weren't required to turn in attendance and averaged 200-220 days. We used the extra days to finish math or do seasonal projects.

[Embassy]

The public schools here have a 192 day school year so that is what we follow. I actually count hours as a way to stay organized. We run around 1000 hours for the school year.

[Julie in MN]

I think the current requirement in NM is 181. It changed from 180 sometime while my son was in high school, but I didn't pay a lot of attention since we weren't required to turn in attendance and averaged 200-220 days. We used the extra days to finish math or do seasonal projects.

 

What an odd change :huh:

 

Kinda like the odd Minnesota law -- we must have a calendar. Doesn't say how many days must be on it... Just need to turn in a calendar each year. I've always wanted to try turning in a calendar with one day on it :tongue_smilie:

 

Julie

[Hunter's Moon]

I just sat there and counted our school district's calendar :tongue_smilie:

 

I counted 175 in-school days, and they have room for 5 snow days that don't need makeup. So, 170-ish days. About 5 or 6 of them were 2-hour early release for professional development days but I counted them anyways.

 

I'm required to do 180, but I just had a meeting with the homeschool woman downtown and she asked nothing about attendance. We were talking about content.

[Tullia]

What an odd change :huh:

 

Kinda like the odd Minnesota law -- we must have a calendar. Doesn't say how many days must be on it... Just need to turn in a calendar each year. I've always wanted to try turning in a calendar with one day on it :tongue_smilie:

 

Julie

 

Yep, I know the feeling. The first two years we homeschooled we had to turn in our calendar showing 180 days in advance and I assume we were supposed to keep actual days on file, but there was no mention of doing that in the law or of turning in actual attendance. So, I always marked down the minimum number of required days, sent it in, and then marked each day we did school on my copy. We always had way more days than needed, and no one ever asked to see our calendar. When the 180 changed to 181 I just scratched my head and went on because by that time the requirement had been changed to simply keeping a record of attendance on file and ds was almost done. Dealing with state educrats is NOT one of the things I miss about hsing. :D

[Lisabeth]

We do 36 weeks of school. I take most of Dec off for school but that means not many other breaks. I like to start earlier in August and finish earlier in May. If they finish their books early though I don't make them start doing another book just to fill the time. Most public and some private schools don't ever finish their books so if we finish them I know we've done more than public school ever would. It's not easy though when PS kids are outside playing and my kids are inside working. They know though that they will normally be outside before the PS kids are out of school so that is the drive that keeps them going. We also take vacations when PS kids are in school - so that helps them too!

[LuvingLife]

I do about 210 days of school and I still can't seem to fit it all in, I think I am going to do a China thing and stick to 260 days of school a year. No wonder those kids are do smart!:D