Summer school blues: Budget cuts have educators scrambling to maintain services
By:
Scott LaFee
A century or so ago, American children typically attended school for nine months of the year, taking the summer off. It was essentially an act of economic necessity. There were crops to tend, and parents needed their children’s help.
That’s no longer true. In 1801, 95 percent of Americans earned their living from agriculture. At the turn of the 20th century, the figure was down to 45 percent. In 2000, it was less than 2 percent. These days, these summers, most American kids have plenty of summertime activities to choose from, even working—but precious few are doing it anywhere near a farm.
Few, too, are going to summer school, which was created for two basic reasons: 1) to help students who needed more academic instruction than they could receive in the traditional school year; and 2) to provide opportunities for students to enrich themselves further, to push the boundaries of their experience and knowledge—whether those boundaries were defined by urban streetscapes, suburban lawns or wide-open rural acres.
Summer school, though, may be going the way of the American farm.
For some adults and probably almost all kids, three months away from the routine and regimen of school is a cherished rite of summer. But there’s an academic price to be paid for that freedom.
Over the years, various studies have documented that children experience a measurable learning loss when they do not engage in academic or educational activities during the summer. A century’s worth of data shows that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of summer.
A 1996 study published in the Review of Educational Research found that most students lose about two months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months. Low-income students also lose more than two months of reading achievement, though their middle-class peers make slight gains.
That disparity likely has an economic and social basis, say experts. Middle-class families have more resources to offset the lack of schooling during the summer. Middle-class children are more likely to be exposed to other, compensating activities.
On the other hand, suggests Harris Cooper, a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia who authored the 1996 study, poor children tend to be victims of the “faucet theory,” which posits that when summer comes around, the spigot of academic resources for the poor simply gets turned off, the children left to their own meager devices.
“Middle-class and better-off parents have the resources on their own to compensate to some degree and provide whatever their children might need—remediation, enrichment or acceleration-type activities when school is not in session,” Cooper wrote in a research brief. Poor children do not.
Karl Alexander, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, estimates about two-thirds of the ninth-grade academic gap between disadvantaged youths and their better-off peers can be explained by what happens (or doesn’t) over the summer during the elementary school years.
In a 2007 study, he found that during the school year, lower-income children’s skills improve at nearly the same rate as those of better-off classmates. Over the summer, however, disadvantaged children tread water at best or, more likely, fall behind. Children with more resources continue to advance. He described the pattern as “definite and dramatic.”
But it’s not all about loss when children miss out on summer school opportunities. Research indicates most children, particularly those already at high risk of obesity, gain weight more rapidly when out of school during the summer.
Paul von Hippel, an Ohio State University statistician, estimates children gain weight two to three times faster during summer vacation than during the school year. In a 2007 study, he and his colleagues found that children’s body mass index grew nearly twice as fast during the summer. Conversely, children experienced healthier weight gain—and even weight loss—during school months.
The reason is fairly obvious, according to von Hippel: During the school year, students maintain at least a minimum schedule of daily or weekly physical activity and subscribe to regular eating habits. For eligible kids, free or reduced-price meals may be the only truly healthy, balanced food they get all day.
Once school ends, though, everything changes. The summer stereotype of children running around outside, climbing trees and playing sports may be true for some, but certainly not all. For many children, especially those already overweight or at risk of becoming overweight, summer simply means more time to watch TV, play video games and eat junk food.
Summer cuts
The value of summer school is hard to dispute, yet its recent history appears largely defined by widespread and sometimes deep reductions in services and expectations.
“Education is significantly underfunded, especially in this state and particularly in the area of summer school enrichment,” says Kathy Kinley, who retired in 2008 after 25 years as a trustee in the Chaffey Joint Union High School District and is a former California School Boards Association president with a doctorate in education. “The idea that a kid might take an art class or music or spend the summer on field trips, well, for the most part that’s been gone for quite a few years.”
Which means most summer school programs strictly focus upon helping students at risk of failing a grade level, not being promoted or being ineligible to graduate.
“Summer school in most large cities generally is designed solely for the purpose of remediation, limited in duration and intensity and offered only to a subset of kids who qualify based on poor academic performance during the school year,” said Ron Fairchild, executive director of the National Center for Summer Learning, a think tank and advocacy group based at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore; Alexander, the Johns Hopkins sociologist professor who found the “definite and dramatic” learning loss among disadvantaged students, is on the center’s National Advisory Board.
Districts do what they can
Probably few educators would disagree with Fairchild; even fewer would suggest things will get better soon, especially in California. The state government’s highly publicized financial crises and its seemingly chronic inability to develop timely, effective solutions have wreaked obvious havoc upon school district budgets and funding. For most districts, this year’s summer school programs will not escape unscathed.
Specifically, state legislators slashed summer school funding nearly 20 percent for 2009-10, though they did allow districts to divert other funds to summer school programs, if desired. That may prove to be little consolation to many district officials, given that—as former CSBA President Kinley noted—the programs have been so underfunded in recent years.
In a message to parents, colleagues and the community earlier this year, Jan La Torre-Derby, the superintendent of the Novato Unified School District north of San Francisco, warned that the state’s fiscal woes seriously threatened to undermine the district’s own financial stability. “We are constantly at the mercy of the Governor, the Legislature and the state budget process,” La Torre-Derby wrote.
Despite previous budgetary cuts, which included eliminating programs and laying off teachers, La Torre-Derby added that further cuts were looming, along with a re-examination of the summer school program. The 2009 version, district officials said early on, would be basic and bare bones, designed primarily to keep at-risk students in school and on track for graduation.
Novato is by no means alone. Fremont Union High School District Superintendent Polly Bove sent a letter to school principals in February warning them that the 2009 summer school program would likely be “cut back dramatically” for budgetary reasons.
“We’re going to have one,” Bove wrote, “but it’s going to be smaller and focused on making sure older students get the classes they need to meet graduation requirements.”
Bove acknowledged that no one was happy with the situation or the prospects of a much-diminished summer school. It harms both students and teachers, many of whom depend upon the additional income.
It’s a common story heard across the state, despite local school leaders’ best efforts.
For years, the K-8 Los Altos School District in northwest Santa Clara County ran a relatively expansive summer school program, featuring not just basic or remedial classes but enrichment courses in the arts, cooking, drama, robotics and forensic sciences. It was expensive, but the district picked up the additional costs.
This year will be different. For the first time, the district will limit its summer program to bottom-line academics, Jeff Baier, assistant superintendent of instruction and curriculum, said this spring.
“The budget crisis has really forced change. We looked at the numbers and determined we simply couldn’t afford to offer enrichment classes anymore. We had to focus on providing solely for the neediest kids,” said Baier. “We’re talking about those kids who are struggling with grade-level content. … We need to get them to a place where they can be successful.”
The summer program, though, will necessarily need to be cost-neutral, Baier continued. The district cannot afford any more expense than the state is willing or able to reimburse. One consequence: Los Altos will be able to help fewer needy students. The summer school program will be scaled back, serving no more than 180 students, a 10 percent decrease from the usual 200 or so participants.
“This is one of those issues that pit budget needs against the academic needs of students,” said Baier. “We haven’t had too much negative reaction so far from the community. People mostly understand the crisis and the necessity to do things we don’t really want to do. You just hope that in the end, students aren’t hurt.”
For officials in Simi Valley Unified School District, it’s déjà vu. Last year, they cancelled summer school for middle and elementary school students, citing budget constraints. High school students could take summer courses only if they had failing grades, and only in core subjects like English, math, history, science and foreign languages.
“None of the board members want to see the summer school program cut for any reason,” board president Eric Lundstrom said at the time. “It’s tough also for those students who want to take classes to catch up or advance themselves. It’s one of those Catch-22s. Sometimes you just have to make tough decisions.”
And now they’ve done it again. Lundstrom said the 22,000-student Simi Valley district would again limit its 2009 summer program to elementary and secondary students at greatest academic risk.
“We’ll focus on kids with special needs, who need something to keep them moving forward or moving to the next level. Money is so tight. We’re looking at laying off teachers. We haven’t had to yet, but we’ve issued pink slips to 200 of 900 on staff. I don’t know how many might actually have to go.”
Change needed
For people like Fairchild at the National Center for Summer Learning, this is all seriously bad news, action moving in the wrong way. He said schools should be offering all elementary and middle school students “a six-week, full-day summer learning program that meets a wide range of academic and development needs of young people,” not reducing offerings.
“We need to think creatively about how schools can provide a wider range of summer enrichment experiences,” he says, especially for children who would not otherwise have them.
Districts like Simi Valley may provide part of the solution. Board president Lundstrom says the district has tried to ease the impact of its reduced summer program by seeking outside partners. The school district, for example, is teaming up for the first time with the local community college to provide summer classes that offer high school or early college credits.
Los Altos’ Baier says his district has arranged with outside groups to run summer programs, such as sports camps, on school grounds. A few district teachers have even gone into business, he reports, creating fee-based summer programs for their students and parents.
“The benefit there is that they already know the kids. They know what the standards and expectations are. We’ll have to see how it works out, but there are a lot of possibilities.”
Such inventiveness and collaboration, however, is not a permanent solution. A 2000 study by the National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities found that the best summer school programs featured well-funded efforts organized by highly motivated staff working year-round on the issue.
Fairchild agrees: “Running a high-quality program requires a great deal of planning and sufficient lead time for recruiting, hiring and training personnel. Often funding decisions about summer school are made too late in the school year, which has a negative impact on this planning process. Parents and children often do not get information about summer school until May.”
Speaking frankly, local school officials say things probably won’t be much different this year. It’s hard to make plans when the situation at the state level remains in seemingly constant flux.
But one thing seems clear, as former CSBA President Kinley warns: The prospects of summer relief won’t improve anytime soon. “At least for the next few years,” Kinley says, “I’m not very optimistic.”
Scott LaFee is a regular contributor to California Schools.
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