Monfredo: A Strong Summer School will Help Solve the Achievement Gap

Saturday, April 20, 2019

John Monfredo, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER

John Monfredo

Last week on GoLocalWorcester, I wrote about the need to make reading on Grade Level a top priority in the Worcester Public Schools. Being able to read proficiently is the crucial prerequisite to becoming educated. Once you can read, you acquire the knowledge needed to be productive workers and good citizens. Thus, reading proficiency by the end of the third grade has become a goal throughout the nation. Research states that this is an important predictor of high school graduation and career success. It has been pointed out that every year 68% of America’s children and more than 80% of children from low-income families miss this crucial milestone.

For the many children struggling in school additional assistance is needed during the summer months if they are to get on track of reading on grade level. Years of research confirms what educators, including myself, have been saying for a long time …during the summer vacation students lose too much of what they learned during the school year. Most students lose two months of mathematical skills every summer and low-income children lose another two to three months in reading.

What I find most disturbing is that research shows that summer learning loss is cumulative year after year and this contributes to the achievement gap that we all hear about. If children are losing two to three months of academic growth during the summer and if you look at that situation occurring year after year it adds up to be a heavy loss by the time the student enters the seventh grade. According to researchers the result of a “summer slide” in academic skills may account for 80% of the achievement gap by grade six.

As you can see the evidence is there for schools to add learning time during the summer months, but budget constraints make it a tough sell for many communities including Worcester. Therefore as a community, school districts need to step up and come up with a plan to narrow the achievement gap that widens during the summer months. Right now it’s time for school districts to get very serious about summer learning. This has been a priority with me since my years as a principal and due to budget constraints the progress has been slow. I would like to see this issue take a must do attitude and for our state legislators to come up with the needed funding. Again, this is PREVENTION and it does work!

We need an expansion of summer learning for our students in grades 1 and 2 if we are to get our students reading on grade level by the end of grade three. Let’s make an all-out attempt to encourage learning by using the media to encourage summer reading and have students enroll in summer school programs. Let’s promote summer school and other summer opportunities through a variety of marketing and outreach strategies…telephone calls to the home, summer learning fairs, back-pack letters on three different occasions, PTO meetings, signs on city buses, interfaith groups, radio and TV commercials. I would also suggest that the Worcester Public Schools use (in many of our low-income schools) our wrap-around coordinators to recruit students and address the issue of learning loss with our parents. We need a strong buy-in from our parents, especially for those students who are struggling to read. We can’t stop the learning train in June if we are to meet the needs of our children who are struggling. It’s those same struggling students who become frustrated with school and give up on themselves.

However, schools can’t do it alone but they must provide the leadership to connect with the community. Let’s enhance summer learning by embracing community-based programs and resources. Let’s include our colleges, public libraries, and museums, centers of worship, science centers, social agencies and together work on a plan. Ask our community agencies that are running summer programs for a fee to provide scholarship programs to students who need assistance. It’s April and the time to start the process is now!

What about college and universities helping out? Could the colleges and universities come up with a program that would assist the children in Worcester? We have many colleges with lots of empty rooms in the summer time and if asked I’m sure we can get some to assist the children in our schools. The programs could be separate or they could be in partnership with a school close to the college.

The National Summer Learning Association through Johns Hopkins University suggested a set of principles that should guide summer learning. A few of them are as follows:

Increase the length of summer school to six weeks.
Strengthen and expand partnerships and coordinate programs between agencies and funding streams.
Encourage attendance in a variety of ways, such as providing comprehensive supports, incentives and engaging programs.
Target key transition periods…transition to kindergarten, primary grades, middle school, high schools.
Add enrichment opportunities for students in the arts-music, theatre, and dance, as part of summer school offerings
Increase student’s wonder and interest in the nature world and physical sciences. Get students involved in learning about astronomy and robotics. There are many college students (especially at WPI) who might be interested in fostering students in these areas

While there is overwhelming evidence on the side of adding time during the summer months, budget constraints make it difficult. However, that is no excuse for not moving forward with a viable program. Our first job is to get a SPECIAL SUMMER SCHOOL COMMITTEE FORMED now and come up with a plan and attempt to involve the state and the community. Let us enhance summer learning with school recruitment especially in the early grades, embrace community based programs and reach out for resources from our libraries, colleges, social agencies, churches and museums that have the means of making a difference in this community. We need a call to ACTION within the community to start the process moving.

Now is the time to seriously make the necessary plans to assist our children in summer learning and that will help with reading on grade level, too. Quite frankly, all we continue to do is talk about the achievement gap. How about coming up with a possible solution and get the conversation going on how to make it work. Let’s not have summer learning as an afterthought! Let’s do it for the children.