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This piece, first published on December 9, 2013, is being republished as part of the Chicago Policy Review's 20th Anniversary Series. Please visit us here to learn more about the series from our Executive Editors.
Urban leaders are constantly forced to balance improving public goods for residents with making the most sustainable fiscal decisions for the area's future. A prosperous local economy depends on an educated citizenry, but tighter budgets currently make many innovative educational initiatives unviable. Research has shown that low-income students are often those most severely affected by summer learning loss, yet elongating or redistributing the academic calendar poses complex economic consequences for both school districts and parents.
A recent study in the Journal of Urban Economics highlights some of these challenges by evaluating how the structure of the academic calendar for young children impacts maternal workforce participation. Jennifer Graves' 2013 paper, "School calendars, child care availability and maternal employment," finds that moving to a yearlong academic calendar, in which long summer vacations are traded for shorter breaks spread across the calendar year, has been shown to reduce the number of working mothers in an area's economy. These findings can help guide policymakers when determining what is best for their individual school districts,...