Knowledge Bank: Oh the places they'll go…and it won't be summer school

Credit&Forget it

Oh the places you’ll (the kiddies will) go, and it won’t be summer school!

Across the country people are grappling with the ailing economy and struggling to stay afloat. Schools have also suffered hard hits due to the lack of sufficient funds to run summer programs. In Florida, North Carolina, Delaware, California and Washington many of the summer programs have endure significant cuts or have been eliminated completely.

In today’s NYTimes:

“We’re seeing a disturbing trend of districts making huge cuts to summer school; they’re just devastating these programs,” said Ron Fairchild, executive director of the National Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s having a disproportionate impact on low-income families.”

The federal stimulus law is channeling $100 billion to public education, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan has repeatedly urged states and districts to spend part of the money to keep schools open this summer.

But thousands of districts have ignored Mr. Duncan’s urgings. In Florida and California, for example, government revenues have fallen so precipitously that, even after receiving federal stimulus dollars, local officials have been forced to make deep cuts to school budgets. Officials in many other states, considering summer school a frill, despite research showing it can narrow the achievement gap between poor and affluent children, have spent their stimulus money elsewhere.

The article continues on to say that according to the Johns Hopkins research students from low-income families with no active employment during the summer or educational, cultural plans will “forget more math and reading skills over the summer than their affluent classmates, who often receive intellectual stimulation in the summer from canoe trips, language camps or ballet lessons.”

In sum, students across the country that are in dire need of extra assistance won’t be able to receive it this summer. The achievement gap widens…