NO MORE 'SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER'

By THOMAS W. CARROLL
August 4, 2009 –

ANYONE who came of age during the 1970s likely remembers the Alice Cooper hit song "School's Out,"
featuring the refrain "school's out for summer." Kids today most likely know the song from the Guitar Hero
III video game.’

Yet, with US test scores continuing to lag behind other nations', and New York's scores lagging the
national ones, should school still be out for summer?

In March, Education Secretary Arne Duncan noted: "What I worry about a lot is summer reading loss. You
have kids who don't have a lot of books at home and aren't read to . . . You get kids to a certain point in
June, and when they come back in September, they're further behind than when they left you three
months ago."

Although disadvantaged students learn at almost the same rate as other students, they start out further
behind and give up substantial ground every summer -- when more advantaged students reinforce their
skills through informal access to books, and various educational and enrichment activities.

According to Karl Alexander, the John Dewey professor of sociology at John Hopkins University, "About
two-thirds of the ninth-grade academic achievement gap between disadvantaged youngsters and their
more advantaged peers can be explained by what happens over the summer during the elementary-
school years."

The summers-off school year hasn't always been the standard. As College of Staten Island Professor
Kenneth Gold explains, "Public education in 1840s New York [City] was a year-round affair, as urban
schooling had been for many years." At the time, school was broken into four quarters, and no drop in
student attendance was recorded during summer.

With three weeks off in August, the school year averaged around 245 days in 1842, dropping to 224 after
the Board of Education took over the city public schools in 1853 -- and then to just over 200 days in 1892,
with summer vacation newly starting on July 3. It wasn't until the 1960s that virtually the entire nation had
switched to today's standard of 175- to 180-day school years, with 6.5-hour days.

What is often ignored, however, is that long summer breaks don't affect all students equally. Almost two
thirds of households now include either two working parents or are headed by a single custodial parent
who works -- meaning that most children home during summer days aren't in the care of their parents.
For middle- and upper-income families, students are often enrolled in educationally enriching summer
camps and programs and have access to books and libraries, computers and trips to museums and
concerts.

For less advantaged students, unsupervised settings with little or no academic content are more common
-- with predictable setbacks in their academic progress.

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