Several studies have emerged to show that summer learning loss, or "the summer slide," puts low-income students at a disadvantage. During their time off, they lose a lot of what they learned during the year. And they often don't have the benefit of overnight camp, family trips or outings to museums that make up for it.
The solution, however, is not to cancel summer holidays altogether, but instead to create new programs, perhaps funded through public-private partnerships, to help fill the summer void.
A study from Johns Hopkins University that tracked 800 Baltimore children from first grade to adulthood found that by ninth grade, losses over the summer accounted for almost two-thirds of the achievement gap between income groups. While poor students fell back, middle-income ones either held steady or made progress during summer break. A new Ontario study found that children from low-income families who had only a one-month break in the summer did better in math, retained more of their lessons and needed less time for review.
Summer, revered as a time of freedom and adventure, actually requires money and planning. This is a more safety-conscious era, so even with one or both parents at work, children are usually not free to roam the neighbourhood, because of a fear of predators. Many wind up frittering away their time on hand-held consoles, playing Wii, or watching re-runs of Spongebob Squarepants while gorging on soda pop and potato chips and contributing to the national obesity rate. While this is particularly true in families without the means to travel, go camping, or pay for specialty camps for 10 weeks in a row, summer also places a strain on middle-class families.
The solution, however, isn't year-round schooling for all, as some proponents argue; but an expansion of opportunities for financially disadvantaged children, so that their summers can be as meaningful as possible. Private camps, for example, could allow a certain percentage of children to attend without paying the fees; this would increase the camp's diversity and capacity for outreach. Schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods could offer more innovative outdoor programs that combine physics and basketball, or outdoor survival and astronomy. Public pools could offer free swimming classes.
More classroom time is not the answer. Opportunities to explore the natural world, cultivate artistic talents, or develop other areas of interest that contribute to the health and development of students, are the real path to summer learning.