Audio will be available later today.

For decades, the U.S. school calendar has been mostly unchanged. Kids start in late August, then off for winter and get a spring break and then almost three months off in summer before repeating the cycle. But it wasn’t always so. There have been calls over the years to create a more rigorous calendar. So how did we land on our current calendar? Morning Shift talks Kenneth Gold, School’s In: The History of Summer Education in American Public Schools and Dean of Education at The College of Staten Island/CUNY about the history of the school calendar and possible alternatives.