Summer Learning Loss
Lane Kenworthy observes that for all its flaws, the American education system really does lean against inequality:
Second, we have evidence from the natural experiment that is summer vacation. During those three months out of school, the cognitive skills of children in lower socioeconomic status (SES) households tend to stall or actually regress. Kids in high-SES households fare much better during the summer, as they’re more likely to spend it engaged in stimulating activities. In his book Intelligence and How to Get It, cognitive psychologist Richard Nisbett concludes that “much, if not most, of the gap in academic achievement between lower- and higher-SES children, in fact, is due to the greater summer slump for lower-SES children” (p. 40).
The summer vacation issue is something that middle class people tend not to think about. But when you consider it for a moment, it’s clear that there’s a real problem here. After all, it’s not as if the child development process goes on hold just because the weather’s warm. Loving parents continue to attempt to nurture their children’s growth. But parents with more time, financial resources, social capital, and know-how are going to be able to accomplish much more for their children than will low-SES parents. In a 2008 CAP paper, Melissa Lazarín examined the benefits of expanded learning time for English language learners, which seems like a particularly intuitive case of the summer vacation problem. A seven year-old whose parents are fluent English speakers doesn’t halt his English-language development just because it’s summertime. but a seven year-old growing up in a Spanish-dominant immigrant household basically does.
Or simply consider anyone whose parents fall into the surprisingly large category of illiterate adults. If you can’t read, you’re not going to read to your children. But middle class parents do read to their children—teaching them, in effect—whether or not it’s summer vacation.
For more on this I’d recommend “Summer Learning Loss: The Problem and Some Solutions” and CAP’s extensive work on expanded learning time. There are some challenges to improving educational outcomes for the underprivileged that are very complicated conceptually or politically. This one really isn’t. It costs some money, but it’s also very costly to have children grow up with subpar educations.
38 Responses to “Summer Learning Loss”
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May 23rd, 2009 at 11:33 am
Good post. This would be a fine time to mention that Summer vacation is really a relic of the past that no longer serves a desired purpose (although it does allow kids to have fun, cuz school really does suck).
Summer vacation was originally intended for rural areas, so students of farmers could help their parents when crop cycles demanded the extra help. That day is long gone and our policies should be adjusted in light of it.
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:52 am
I quite agree. Though, I’d go further, which I think fits with the larger observations of the paper, in that we need a broader array of services available to young children and their families. Home health visits, quality day care, community centers and counseling all have a role to play in helping to increase student achievement and relieve the social burden on schools in their education mission. Not that I suspect Matt would disagree.
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
An occasional article from CAP about education would be ok – but it would be a lot better if they got their priorities straight.
Even if educational outcomes are improved, that won’t change the fact that 70% of the population won’t benefit from college and 40% will function at a below-high school level.
If the need to provide meaningful, useful employment for those people isn’t addressed, educational improvement is a moot point.
CAP needs to get their priorities straight.
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Because Matt is a hack, he deliberately ignores the fact that the children of ThoseDirtyMexicans, especially the stealth subversives who were born here, spend their summers plotting the advancement of BrownPoliticalPower by playing soccer in the park.
I have 14,372 posts on this topic. Subscribe to my feed, or I’ll do a Roh Moo-hyun.
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
I speak from two perspectives: one as a community college instructor and the other from personal experience. First of all, while certainly the right kind of summer program might benefit children, I find the idea of institutionalizing children year round a preposterous technique for improving scholastic achievement. The students I see–those that have not done well enough to go to universities already suffer from extreme cynicism about school being a rewarding learning experience–bad tasting medicine would be a more apt description.
Secondly, school emphasizes one kind of thinking that does not develop the wide range of thinking adult and professional life requires. I can tell you as someone who came from a generation that never went to summer school, yet had quite extraordinary, by comparison with today, scholastic skills, working in adult environments and playing with my friends all summer long never retarded my or my peers’ scholastic achievement. And we never cracked a book, never, all summer long.
Everyone wants to point to this, that, or the other reform.
Here’s what it will take: intensive mentoring, counseling, and tutoring from the fourth grade on, engaging parents in doing so. If one offers summer programs, they should be creative, alternative approaches to learning that don’t bear the stink of institutionalization to them.
How do I know this works? Because I worked with a program that did this, and year after year after year those populations for whom we provided this service and that have historically low college enrollment and retention rates out competed not only the groups from which they come, but the population at large.
It’s not the time but the quality of the time students are engaged in school that matters. All learning theory posits that the first step to learning is engagement. If human beings are not engaged, they don’t learn. Ask yourself, if this is not true to your own experience. Longer hours, more homework, year round school–unless you can show me how that engages students better, I will remain skeptical.
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Fuck you people. We give kids an average of 4 hours of homework a night. They deserve a god damn break from that to actually be children.
Half the memories you fuckers treasure from your childhoods came from those summer vacations. Do you really want to deprive your chidlren of that? Getting good grades isn’t the most important thing in life. Actually getting to live it is.
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Excellent points about summer school vacations. They don’t make much sense for middle class families, either.
What this is NOT relevant to is whether education (9,10 or 12 months per year) that is financed by taxes should also be deliveded by public employees, “public schools,” or not. Vouchers for summer school could work as well as vouchers for “regular” school.
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:55 pm
So, besides having their parents read to them, what exactly are middle-class kids doing during the summer that their poorer classmates aren’t?
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:59 pm
This is somewhat tongue in cheek, but – since Matt seems to think that climate change is going to kill us all, perhaps he could speak to the increased carbon outputs that would be required to run the schools in the southern US during the summer months…
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Citizen E says it a lot better than i could.I will only say that in education, as in most things ,qaulity is better than qaunity.
And for the record a lot of kids in high school work during the summer.A kid who is not rich needs that money. My summer job money is how i paid for my first months rent and deposit on my first apartment.
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Please take a look at the work of Karl Alexander and Doris Entwhisle. They did groundbreaking working with the Baltimore school system starting about two decades ago. The idea of loss occurring during summer vacation has been around for a while – the question is how you deal with it. The idea of year round school is of course the easiest answer, and as one individual above suggests, it fits our ideas that school should somehow be bad medicine to be valuable, but the chances of this happening are very low for a humber of reasons, including the tourist industry, and it is difficult to know how much is would actually alleviate the problem. A much better answer is to establish well developed summer programs that increase both social and cultural capital – something along the lines of what France does. Make the summers enjoyalbe but keep the youth engaged. Again, this is one of theose programs that over the long run would save large amounts of money within society, but would mean an initiail cash outlay for poor people (about one percent of what we are giving the banks) so it is not going to happen. It is not that we don’t know what to do, it is that we don’t do it.
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I think it is important to understand that if you went to a year-round model, you wouldn’t necessarily need to expand the total number of classroom hours/days. Instead, you could go to more short breaks in place of the one long summer break, which would give kids just as much leisure time but not as much of a break in educational continuity.
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:10 pm
A seven year-old whose parents are fluent English speakers doesn’t halt his English-language development just because it’s summertime. but a seven year-old growing up in a Spanish-dominant immigrant household basically does.
A bilingual seven year-old has more developed cognitive, linguistic, social, and cultural skills that a seven year-old who is merely monolingual.
parents with more time, financial resources, social capital, and know-how are going to be able to accomplish much more for their children than will low-SES parents.
The ability to teach your children a foreign language at home and provide them with an alternative world view certainly must count as having a great deal of social capital.
May 23rd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I am just curious as to whether the people like MR YGLESIAS went to summer school. And if not, whether they volunteered to go.And also if they regret having a summer vacation.
The only reason i passed my classes was so i would not go to summer school ,and could get a summer job. When i got my first full time job when i was 17 in a wharehouse, my boss told me that the only reason that he hired me was that i had worked part time since i was 14.Normally he did not hire young people .
I know that i was not alone in these situations.This was the prime motivation for passing for most kids.The fear of summer school.And a lot of kids wanted to work during the summer.I know that MR YGLESIAS wants every kid to go to college. But some simply do not want to.Those kids need work experience as teenagers.
It’s bad enough that MR YGLESIAS does not want any of us drinking alchohol or eating junk food or driving to work.But now he doesn’t want kids to have summer vacation!
Does MR YGLESIAS practice this sort of ascetism himself.If so, that is good for him.But he should be wary of forcing that lifestyle on others.
I am sure that his intentions are good.I just wish that he would remember his ownsummer vactions as a child, when all he had to do was lay on his back and watch the clouds go by.
I remember those days fondly.I hope he does as well.
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:48 pm
What DTM said, year round school wouldn’t be more days in school, it just means you take the summer vacation and spread it throughout the year.
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:57 pm
This is somewhat tongue in cheek,
Which cheek do you mean? It’s tough to tell, since you seem to write these climate-science posts with your head firmly planted in your ass.
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Right, eric k and DTM.
I’d also add that a longer school year with more days in the classroom could be an alternative to the 4 hours of homework that soulite mentions.
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Many Mexican children who reside in the US spend their summer vacations in Mexico getting to know their grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc., and regaining the fluency in Spanish they inevitably lose while in the US. Once back in the US, they easily transfer their language skills unto English. They also learn to use the metric system.
I cannot believe that American educators think spending time in summer school is more valuable to a foreign child’s education than spending it at home, with family, and developing his/her native language skills.
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
pete from Baltimore,
I understand the point you are making, but I would caution you against status quo bias. In this case, we might think about whether one long break in the summer is really most conducive to giving teenagers an opportunity to work.
For example, imagine something as simple as taking those three months and spreading them out: say one month off in August, the entire month of December off, and the entire month of April off. I think in that world, you could still see teenagers work jobs during their breaks, and you may well have more opportunities thanks to capturing the December retail season (I believe December is almost always the best retail month of a given 12-month period) and spring construction season.
Or not. But my point is that it is very easy to imagine losing the opportunities the status quo offers without considering what opportunities a new schedule might create.
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
1) Our “traditional” school calander was not created to meet the needs of an agriculutral society. Agriculture based communities need the extra labor in the spring and fall– planting and harvesting times– not during the summer. When we had an ag based economy in this society, most kids went to schol a couple of months in the summer and another couple of months in the winter. The “traditional” school calendar was widely adopted in the U.S. in the late 1800’s, i.e., in response to industrialization and mass urbanization.
2) The hypothesis that a larger number of shorter breaks– the year-round notion– was a reasonable notion when proposed thirty years ago. But, it isn’t just an hypothesis now, as scores of longitudinal studies have been done comparing performance of student performance on traditional and year-round calendars. These studies overwhelmingly conclude that there is no meaningful difference in performance– higher or lower– on a year-round calendar.
3) Whether we use a traditional or year-round calendar, the students are the same, the parents are the same, the teachers remain the same, the socio-economic status remains the same, the curriculia remains the same, the books and technology remains the same, and the school administrators remain the same. The only thing that changes is which 180 days a year kids are in school. Given the magnitude of all that remains the same, it shouldn’t be surprising that changing the calendar does not lead to significant differences in performance.
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Camp, work, community service, organized sports? It’s not like any of this is voluntary on the kid’s part, but they’re typically not just hanging around the basketball court from 9 AM to 10 PM.
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:36 pm
One advantage of a longer vacation period in the summer is that it provides more windows for family travel. While Ireland’s schools are closed between the end of May and the end of August, the UK system generally has around six weeks in the summer (mid-June to early September), two at Easter, and three at Christmas, with one-week half-term breaks.
As a result, many parents — especially in lower-income families — choose to take their children abroad in early June or September, missing school time, because it’s cheaper and easier to book outside the peak season. Of course, that’s premised on two-week holidays being feasible for all working adults, but it’s clearly not ideal. The proposed solution is to stagger the long vacation, with some schools closing early in June, others in July, but that has its problems too.
I do think that soullite has a point, though: the homework and after-school load in the US anecdotally seems quite high compared to other rich nations — it’d be good to have quantitative data on that — but it’s the school system where the US is comparatively weaker, and college where students catch up to their foreign peers.
May 23rd, 2009 at 4:07 pm
From the first paragraph of Melissa Lazarín’s 2008 CAP paper:
Más de dos tercios (69 por ciento) de los estudiantes de idioma inglés son ciudadanos nativos o por naturalización y comienzan su educación en escuelas de EE. UU., pero para los niños recién llegados que ingresan en el sistema escolar de EE. UU. mas adelante, el tiempo y las limitaciones de la jornada escolar tradicional plantean un desafío serio.
The syntactical and spelling errors in this sentence clearly indicate a disregard for the benefits of bilingualism, one being able to recognize when a translator has a native level of proficiency in a target language.
While American educators worry about foreign language speakers being left behind, the entire US school population has been left behind in regards to foreign languages.
May 23rd, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Long summer vacations may or may not have an impact on children’s learning but I remember the shock to the system of teaching the same number of days as I did in the UK but getting hardly any breaks between September and June. OK there were a few good breaks but nit many. I was exhausted for most of June as was every other teacher. As a result you could almost discount June for teaching.
The UK system is much better for both teachers and students. Same number of days in school but with breaks spread out over the year. As a student I worked most summers (5 or 6 week break) AND Christmas and Easter too if I felt like it. As a teacher I was never completely wiped as at least every seven to eight weeks I had a break of at least one week.
Families benefitted too. Vacations could be taken at different times of the year and the cost of having young children looked after each summer was not too prohibitive.
After 20 years in the North American system it still does not make sense to me. We never had summer programs, we never needed them.
Patricia
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:09 pm
#5 CitizenE et al.:
I agree that engagement is key. But you may have reversed cause and effect: academic hard work leads to engagement, not vise versa. In every field, the necessary ground work for learning new, interesting ideas and abilities is laid by hours of concentration and practice. Learning is fun, but only after it has been boring and repetitive. Hence the necessary support and discipline provided by parents.
Actually, engagement and discipline are twin aspects of learning, with each strengthening the other.
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I put in a lot of hay and did many other farm chores in June, July and August back in my youth. Like other lower SES kids, if I wanted to have new clothes and soccer/basketball shoes for the next year, it meant working for something less than minimum wage every summer. Even if working wasn’t necessary, in rural areas, there are few voluntary enrichment programs.
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
That’s probably because being unable to speak and write and read English fluently is an enormous handicap to someone seeking to make a living and get ahead in American society, while speaking only English is not.
Don’t get me wrong, bilingualism is nice. Quite nice indeed. It’s also a couple of orders of magnitude less important than English fluency.
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:09 pm
You try sitting in a hot classroom–with no air conditioning–in July in the San Fernando valley! Let alone teach in one!
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Educationalist have been eyeing the summer break from bureaucratic schooling for a hundred years. We need to do wall we can to subvert attempts to lock our children up in these formal educational venues the year round. If there were moves to augment ’summertime’ with venues, events and activities that allow room for positive development and growth fine—just not more school days.
May 23rd, 2009 at 7:35 pm
The trend in liberal thought these days regarding education of poor children is very similar to the liberal program in Australia in the 1920s and 1930s that led to the “Stolen Generation” of half-aboriginal children who were taken away from their alcoholic mothers and given schooling. The Obama Era version is to not send poor children to boarding schools, but merely to keep them away from their mothers for almost all their waking hours.
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:38 pm
It was my impression that this question had been settled, and that schooling does not really decrease inequality. People spent decades trying to show it, and couldn’t. The classic reference is Bowles and Gintis, I think.
I’m a doctoral student in education, but not in this specific area, so don’t take this as gospel.
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:40 pm
This summer break achievement gap was discussed in Outliers by the (according to Petey) “almost always wrong” Malcolm Gladwell. Given my “almost always bet against Petey” policy, Gladwell’s credibility has recently risen considerably in my estimation, but outside confirmation is always nice to see.
May 23rd, 2009 at 9:20 pm
The trend in liberal thought these days
is not what you say it is, Popeye. Unsurprisingly.
May 23rd, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Interesting post. Besides not being popular with students, I’m sure there are also a lot of teachers that like their summer vacations. At any rate, I’m glad I got through school with the summer vacation intact.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:30 pm
I assume this year round schooling system will be coupled with an increase in the EITC so poorer students no longer need summer jobs. How long will upper middle class parents stand for such redistribution before they decide Tiffany and Bryce would be better off not competing against Lien, Monique and Jose?
May 25th, 2009 at 2:25 am
Dick Nisbett is a social psychologist. It’s a field, look it up!
May 25th, 2009 at 11:31 am
The most important thing to remember in this debate is the difference in home environment relative to SES. The effect SES has on child development cannot be underestimated. While it is still difficult to determine what specifically causes this, the effects are nonetheless well-documented.
In her book, Unequal Childhoods, Annette Lareau emphasizes the differences between what she calls “concerted cultivation” parenting in high-SES and “natural growth” parenting in low-SES. Concerted parenting seeks to envelop the child within a richly stimulative environment geared towards cognitive growth, analytic processing, and goal-orientation. Natural growth instead emphasizes child-centered environmental exploration, unregulated freedom, and peer interaction.
On their own, these parenting styles each have their benefits. But combined with other factors such as geography, peer influence, and parent language skill, the low-SES child can be severely disadvantaged in their development. In my experience a native-born, first-language-english speaking child can have much less developed cognitive skills as a foreign-born, second language student. This is primarily due to the SES of the parent.
May 25th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
It’s not although there are no schools which offer summer programs and that no models already exist.
For example, here’s what my school district — which is the classic well-funded, Blue Ribbon-winning suburban district — offers to middle-school & junior high students:
* “By invitation” (in other words, the school strongly urges enrollment in): 4-5 weeks of half-day, small-group instruction summer school for kids who are struggling in reading and /or math. Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone who is middle-class has an easy time in school. There is a tuition charge for these classes that is waived for kids on free or reduced lunch (yes, we have kids on free lunch in suburbia, too. Especially these days).
* Individualized tutoring / classes to qualifying special education students (as determined by the federal spec. ed. law). These are free.
* Optional enrichment classes for gifted kids. Tuition charged.
* By invitation: ESL classes. Tuition charged.
* Optional miscellaneous classes open to all, including computer enrichment (keyboarding, powerpoint, etc.). Tution charged.
Summer vacation is 10-11 weeks long, so everyone still has time to go on a family vacation and spend a couple of weeks with the cousins in other states, or go to sleep-away camp, or whatever. Even just hanging around the pool provides lessons in things you can’t learn in a classroom.
I’ll say this because it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Cranky around these parts: Matt would be well-served to volunteer in a school or two (maybe one suburban, one inner-city) before writing any more about the state of contemporary education.