Public Schooling Systems Should Operate Year-Round

Thank you for the more challenging rebuttal. I think the topic over teacher's unions/contracts/tenures is a separate issue. Yes, it is very hard to fire a teacher who performs poorly, even after years of parental complaints and poor performance reviews from administrators. I had a very bad teacher in 6th grade, everyone knew she was bad, and for years, people wrote formal complaints about her, eventually the school administrators moved her into a mobile-trailer classroom outside the school to teach 'basic skills' just to get her away from the rest of the students. Private schools do not have teaching unions, so this problem is non-existent there. There's no perfect system for finding perfect employees, but once again, that's another issue. As for the time scheduling, schools release their students around 2:30 PM, which is still way before the standard work day. If the student plays sports, then they attend that. If they are not old enough and require additional care after school, almost every public school has an after-hours care. I attended one for a time as well. The time there was spent doing HW and playing games with the other kids. This was an additional cost to parents, but it's within reason, (i can not give accurate costs) my parents were by no means wealthy. The money/funding is really the biggest issue and what education will come down to. We all want a better society, a better economy and job market, but how can we expect that with low education standards, and sinking education rankings relative to other countries? It all starts with a good education, it's not always a tangible thing, but it's something society has to make a decision on together for the greater good. We already put a high value on education at the advanced level (college). I have friends that just graduated with $120k-$180k in loan debt over 4-5 years. This was from an expensive university, but you see my point. Why is a 4-5 year education worth so much, but the education you receive for the previous 13 years any less important? The school budget in my hometown was often voted down because there was a large population of senior citizens that would vote the budget down because they didn't want their taxes to go up, even the smallest bit. The school system was not very good, and my parents sent me away to private school because of this. Now that many of them have died (sry to say this), and people with children have moved in, the people who care about their children's education vote the budget up knowing their taxes are being spent on their own children, thus granting the school more for the students. My younger brother is now attending a school that my parents once dreaded the thought of ever sending me to. I personally do not have all the details figured out, I can imagine smaller school districts merging with larger ones to make the system more cost effective. But the idea is to enable and push the minimum standards of education, and this is a decision that society must make. I believe that a viable approach through year-round schooling can be achieved. My inspiration for this topic came from TED Talks conference on Education, and from one of the talks in particular. I will post the link below. Thanks for debating. This is the specific talk. http://www.youtube.com... If you are interested in other education talks, just YouTube search: TED Talks Education 2013