A new vision: Students actually want to attend summer school
By Ron Fairchild
Ron Fairchild is the chief executive officer of the National Summer Learning Association in Baltimore
When it comes to closing academic achievement gaps, summer has been the season of lost opportunities.
Mention the words “summer school” to a young person and you’re likely to hear a painful groan. That’s because summer school typically means sitting indoors doing remedial work and feeling punished. Forced to make tough decisions to balance increasingly tight budgets, school districts are no more enthusiastic. A recent survey by the American Association of School Administrators found that 34 percent of respondents are considering eliminating summer school for the 2010‐11 school year – if they haven’t already.
But this summer school malaise obscures an important truth: High-quality summer learning is perhaps the most powerful yet underutilized opportunity to raise achievement in our nation’s education toolkit. When done right – and with the right mix of incentives to ensure attendance – summer learning can help students from low-income families gain ground academically and get on a path to success in school and beyond.
Such programs are more important than ever. Research shows that low-income students lose more than two months in reading achievement each summer while their middle-class peers make slight
