What you need to know about year-round schools with Cara Jackson

Release date: February 6, 2023

As communities struggle to address the impact of the pandemic on student learning and well-being, there seems to be renewed interest in year-round schools. In this episode of the Talking About Kids podcast, I wanted to address what year-round schooling is and what we know about it. To answer these questions, I enlisted the help of Cara Jackson, a Senior Associate at Abt Associates, who evaluates and conducts systematic reviews of educational programs. In response to Education Next’s article, “Busting the Myths About Year-Round School Calendars,” Cara recently wrote a piece entitled, “Do Year-Round Schools Work? Three Questions to Ask.” We ask and answer those questions here. More information about Cara and some resources hand-picked by her are below.

Biography of Cara Jackson

Cara Jackson is a senior associate in the Social and Economic Policy division at Abt Associates, where she conducts evaluations of educational programs and systematic reviews of research. Prior to joining Abt, she was an associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, evaluating charter school program replication and expansion grants. Cara has also worked in Montgomery County Public School’s Office of Shared Accountability, designing studies to inform district policies and conducting research on a variety of educational initiatives, and was a Strategic Data Project fellow at Urban Teachers, a residency-based teacher preparation program. Cara has experience as a classroom teacher in the New York City and as a policy analyst at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. She received her doctorate in education policy at the University of Maryland.

Links

Do Year-Round Schools Work? Three Questions to Ask. Abt Associates.

https://www.abtassociates.com/insights/perspectives-blog/do-year-round-schools-work-three-questions-to-ask

Busting the Myths About Year-Round School Calendars. Education Next. https://www.educationnext.org/busting-the-myths-about-year-round-school-calendars/

Is summer learning loss real, and does it widen test score gaps by family income? Brookings Brown Center Chalkboard.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2023/01/30/is-summer-learning-loss-real-and-does-it-widen-test-score-gaps-by-family-income/

Democratizing the Development of Evidence. Educational Researcher. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0013189X211060357