Katy Rouse, assistant professor of economics, recently presented her new paper, "Curing the summertime blues: the impact of year-round schooling on academic achievement," at the Allied Social Science Associations Jan. 6-9, 2011. The ASSA is the largest annual economics conference, attracting more than 10,000 academic and government economists from all over the world.
The paper, co-authored by Steven McMullen of Calvin College, examines the effect of Wake county’s change to year-round schooling in the 2007-08 school year. According to Rouse and McMullen, “the growing popularity of year-round academic calendars has spurred heated education policy debates across the country. Interestingly, while there has been much discussion regarding the pros and cons of the year-round calendar, there is currently little quality evidence to lend support to either side of the debate.” Controlling for the impacts of other school, family, and individual characteristics, “results suggest year-round schooling has essentially no impact on the academic achievement of the average student.” Contrary to the existing literature, there is also “no evidence that any racial subgroup benefits from year-round schooling.”