Apparently, summer school is now de rigueur for everyone, when it used to be just the losers and potheads who were stuck inside during the summer months:
There was a time when summer school was rare for anyone except high schoolers who had flunked a course. But in the late 1990s, when Virginia and many other states put new emphasis on standardized achievement tests, summer school classrooms were suddenly filled with children of all ages who had been told they might have to repeat a grade if their test scores didn't improve. Educators in Arlington and Alexandria say the academic emphasis continues, but summer school is no longer simply a last chance to pass a test for promotion. Some summer school students will need to repeat a grade anyway. What is important, teachers say, is giving as many students as possible a chance to keep learning during the summer break so they will not have forgotten so much by the time they return to school in the fall.
The goals "are to maintain, review and reinforce basic reading and mathematics skills," said Felicia Russo, principal at Long Branch Elementary School in Arlington, which has 110 students enrolled in summer school. Sue Ditmore, who at Cora Kelly teaches a class of students who just finished fourth grade, favors eliminating the long summer break for everyone. "It is awful how much time we have to spend reteaching" what is forgotten over the summer, she said.
Am I missing something here? What's going on when even kids who attend summer school will end up repeating grades? And I just don't remember falling behind every summer. Sure, teachers had to catch us up a bit, but it's not as though I completely turned my brain off every summer. Is there really now a much larger percentage of students from such deprived homes that they do not read a single book, learn a single new word, or become enriched in any way every June, July, and August?
Is this happening because schools that teach in an inefficent manner are now panicking about test scores? Or is this related to the over-competitiveness debate that has been featured on many an N2P post?
Posted by kswygert at July 30, 2004 03:50 PM