Some have not seen any academic improvement. One of the most powerful pieces of research we reviewed was done by the New York Board of Regents. They did a seven-year longitudinal study on student retention of information over the summer, where they tested students at the end of the school year and at the beginning of the school year three months later. The kids who were economically disadvantaged fell further behind every year, while those who were not disadvantaged continued to gain. That was probably our strongest indication that those who were economically disadvantaged were going to have the greatest benefit from a year-round calendar.
Language is a barrier here.
A quarter of the students are in bilingual or ESL programs. When students on the farm calendar went home for three months, they heard nothing but Spanish. Our own tests showed there was always a language loss in the summer. Over three months we had more than 100 community meetings in both English and Spanish. We explained the results we were getting with the traditional calendar and shared test scores and attendance and failure rates.