Word: summer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here,” Duncan pointed out to the AP. Many studies indicate that it is during this prolonged summer that the gap between the performance of higher- and lower-income students widens most significantly...
Karl Alexander, the author of one such study, points out that “disadvantaged kids’ test scores improve at pretty comparable rates during the school year...But over the summer they fall behind.” Alexander went on to suggest that the disparity between the kind of environments higher- and lower-income students are exposed to over the summer is primarily responsible for this phenomenon. Higher-income students, he posited, are more likely to be exposed to such enriching experiences as private lessons, computers, newspapers, magazines, libraries, museums, having their parents read to them...
...performance on state standardized tests. Charter schools, moreover, also appear to benefit from longer school years or days. The KIPP national network of charter schools, for example, has a school day typically running from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday class every other weekend, and a three-week summer session, and KIPP’s eighth-grade classes regularly outperform their district averages on standardized tests...
...addition to potentially improving student performance, a shorter summer would also help ensure the safety of lower- income students.“Those hours from 3 o’clock to 7 o’clock are times of high anxiety for parents,” said Duncan...
Duncan also noted that the current system of summer vacations of interminable duration is a vestige of another era. “Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy, and not too many of our kids are working the fields today,” Duncan said...