Summer Learning
By Fawn Johnson

I got an e-mail last week from my rising fifth grader's school coordinator with his summer reading assignments and an approved list of books. I loved that the e-mail offered no explanation or apologies; it assumed that its students' families knew the importance of summer learning.

The stagnation of a child's reading and math abilities during the off months of school has earned the catchy title of "summer slide." A study released last year from the Rand Corporation found that summer learning loss was cumulative, contributing to long-term academic deficiencies. The slower learning rate was most pronounced for low-income kids. Summer school classes, both mandatory and voluntary, helped to mitigate this effect, the study found.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan wants to go farther than that. He has suggested a longer academic school year to keep students' minds active and catch up to other countries in academic achievement. Kids in other countries spend 20 percent to 30 percent more time in school that our kids do, he says. Barring a longer school year, which costs money, the Education Department recently outlined several ways to keep a child engaged in reading during the summer months. The suggestions, such as keeping books around the house for easy reading, seem a weak substitute for longer school years or summer classes.

How serious is learning stagnation during the summer months? Are there good reasons for sticking with the current school 180-day year? If resources weren't an issue, what is the ideal amount of time a child should spend in school? How can educators make sure time isn't wasted during school hours? Are there other effective ways to stem "summer slide" other than summer school?

Summer Opportunities, Not Summer School
By Kevin Welner

The summer slide is real, it’s important, and it’s been neglected. But as we think about how to address it, we need to move away from a mindset focused on the mere intensification or extension of the school year. That’s a remedial model, and it’s one that’s often built on a deficit idea of children and their families.

In contrast, think about the enrichment activities gifted by wealthier families to their children over the summer. These activities engage and they accelerate learning; rarely are they intended as a simple extension of the school year. These children are given rich opportunities to learn, and when summer turns to fall their minds are prepared to continue playing with new ideas.

From this perspective, we need to move away from the old “summer school” thinking, which generally connotes a corrective experience and which continues to target kids seen as failing (or close to failing). In most such situations, the students know very well that summer school is a punitive intervention, which is partly why it’s so often a miserable experience for them.

As an alternative, the National Summer Learning Association has described a new vision for summer school (http://www.summerlearning.org/?nvssstatement). Please click through; it’s short and it’s worth a read. Note in particular the 4th principle: “Strengthen and expand partnerships with community-based organizations and public agencies that provide summer activities to align and leverage existing resources, identify and meet gaps in service, improve program quality, and develop shared outcomes for summer success.”

Summer learning loss, and Fawn notes, disproportionately affects children from low-income communities. It also disproportionately hits children of color and English Language Learners. So the equity considerations are huge. In fact, the RAND study cited by Fawn (as well as other research in this area) suggests that learning happens at roughly the same pace across groups during the school year. Yet low-income children of color tend to start out behind and then experience summer learning loss while more affluent children lose little to nothing over the summer, which widens the achievement gap on a year-over-year basis.

One cannot seriously consider these issues without thinking about the role of time. But we should also be careful and creative when thinking about time. It might be helpful to shift from speaking about “extending the school year” to speaking about extending into the summer rich opportunities to learn and grown. High-quality summer learning can certainly provide the additional time for children to catch up with reading skills and other academic pursuits, but it can also ensure that low-income children have engaging growth opportunities similar to their more affluent peers. So what we’re talking about here is not just summer learning loss, it’s summer opportunity loss – a gap that is arguably often even more stark and pernicious than the opportunity gaps students experience during the school year.