Year-Round Schooling Rejected

For many parents, juggling basketball practice, piano lessons, Brownies, and the occasional getaway is hard enough. So when residents of two Florida counties were faced with adding assorted school vacations to the mix, they balked.

At the urging of parents in Orange and Seminole counties, school officials decided to abandon their plan to implement year-round schedules in all of the districts' elementary and middle schools. Instead, the two districts, which together serve 180,000 students, will return next year to more traditional approaches, with a long summer break.

Like a number of other school systems nationwide, the two county districts began experimenting with the year-round calendar believing that students would forget less if school breaks were shorter. But the new school calendars quickly became unpopular with parents. "The disruption of family life was what everyone was complaining about,'' says Dede Schaffner, a spokeswoman for the Seminole County district. "People said it was conceivable that with kids at different schools, you could never have...