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Texas Blue Ribbon Schools buck early start logic

The U.S. Department of Education last month named 24 Texas campuses as Blue Ribbon Schools, a prestigious national award that bodes well for teachers, parents and students in those communities, but which may not be looked upon as favorably by proponents of early school start dates.

The Education Department recognizes top schools across the country every year following an extensive application process and a visit to select campuses by a panel of education experts. It is a rigorous procedure that takes into account curriculum, instructional leadership, test scores and learning environment.

For the past decade, many Texas schools have been creeping back the start of the school year toward early August, far from the traditional period around Labor Day. The main reason usually given for this change is that students and teachers need the extra time to prepare for a state-mandated exam, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, which will be replaced in 2003-04 with a new test.

But the Blue Ribbons Schools announcement exposes yet another flaw in that argument. Fewer than half of the state’s Blue Ribbon Schools started school in 2001 before August 15. One in five of the schools started on August 21 or later.

This shows there is no apparent link between school start dates and achievement at the Blue Ribbon campuses, supporting the findings of Dr. Gene V. Glass, associate dean for research in the College of Education at Arizona State University. Citing two decades of scholarly research, Glass found that changing the school calendar is “very unlikely to yield higher levels of pupil achievement.”