Just because kids can physically and mentally handle a longer school year, should we necessarily eliminate summer vacation or make it short? I think not. Summer has come to serve a purpose - younger kids spend time at camp, building non-academic skills and older kids/young adults do community service, internships and summer classes at high school or community college. (This is actually a concept I wrote an entire post about in response to the original explainer article last summer...) The article mentions hindering the learning process, but it merely cites lower scores on standardized tests. Despite the prevalence of the SAT and similar tests, standardized tests have ALWAYS been questionable as to their ability to measure intelligence and learning. Plus, kids in the US school system still grow up to some pretty amazing things and a variety of fields, even with competition from stringent school systems like Japan. So could summer vacation really be detrimental in the long run? I doubt it - summer camp, community service and internships have provided me with some of my best memories and most valuable experiences.

Does summer vacation really need to be twelve weeks long for kids to go to a one-week summer camp? Why can't they have four of those weeks in the winter?

In the current era of No Child Left Behind, cutting back on summer vacation is dangerous. The incentives for just raising test scores at the expense of everything else is very strong for principals right now - if you don't raise test scores, you can lose your job. Schools are already doing too much test prep. A longer school year or more time in school will just turn into more time spent on test prep.

Outside of school, children do incredibly creative things, especially if you can give them the gift of unstructured time. This kind of learning is so much more important than practice taking reading comprehension exams.

I don't suppose that it's occurred to you that a longer school year might make *more* time for things other than test prep, instead of less? Or that some of those days could be added after the test taking is over, and therefore there's no need for extra test prep work?

I wonder how many Slate readers are aware that the countries that have really long school years often also have short school days? Some of these countries send all of their elementary school students home by one o'clock in the afternoon, on the theory that kids need to play outside every day, not just during summer vacation.

once:

Does summer vacation really need to be twelve weeks long for kids to go to a one-week summer camp? Why can't they have four of those weeks in the winter?

I would say that summer does need to be long for camp - because most camps are much longer than that, and many kids go to long camps, or multiple short ones. Not to mention that for older kids who are interning or doing community service, the way to get the most out of those experiences is to have a significant length of time to immerse oneself in the work environment.

I don't see any reason why kids shouldn't have a longer vaction in the winter - in fact, many colleges take advantage of extended winter breaks. I just graduated from undergrad and my college required us to complete three winter term projects to graduate. These projects can entail almost anything, from classes to internships to personally designed projects on practically anything. As a result of my winter terms, I got to work at an environmental non-profit, do ecology research in Panama and work for Habitat for Humanity.