CHILDREN FROM LOW INCOME FAMILIES EXPERIENCE SUMMER LOSS AT A HIGHER RATE: Dull summers take a steep toll, as researchers have been documenting for more than a century. Deprived of healthy stimulation, millions of low-income kids lose a significant amount of what they learn during the school year. Call it summer learning loss, as the academics do, or the summer slide, but by any name summer vacation is among the most pernicious--if least acknowledged--causes of achievement gaps in Americas schools. Children with access to high-quality experiences keep exercising their minds and bodies at sleepaway camp, on family vacations, in museums and libraries and enrichment classes. Meanwhile, children without resources languish on street corners or in front of glowing screens. By the time the bell rings on a new school year, the poorer kids have fallen weeks, if not months, behind. And even well-off American students may be falling behind their peers around the world (Time Magazine, 2010). The problem of summer vacation, first documented in 1906, compounds year after year. What starts as a hiccup in a 6-year-olds education can be a crisis by the time that child reaches high school. After collecting a centurys worth of academic studies, summer-learning expert Harris Cooper, now at Duke University, concluded that, on average, all students lose about a month of progress in math skills each summer, while low-income students slip as many as three months in reading comprehension, compared with middle-income students. Another major study, by a team at Johns Hopkins University, examined more than 20 years of data meticulously tracking the progress of students from kindergarten through high school. The conclusion: while students made similar progress during the school year, regardless of economic status, the better-off kids held steady or continued to make progress during the summer--but disadvantaged students fell back. By the end of grammar school, low-income students had fallen nearly three grade levels behind, and summer was the biggest culprit. By ninth grade, summer learning loss could be blamed for roughly two-thirds of the achievement gap separating income groups (Time Magazine, 2010). Enroll your child in an affordable summer camp that simulates learning! Only $50 per week (plus activity fee), 6 a.m. - 6 p.m., June 16th-August 22nd; Monday-Friday! Call 757-727-6945 or 757-244-0716 or visit girlsincofgreaterpen/?p=882
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 14:21:45 +0000
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