A veteran educator with 25 years of service shared some thoughts on student achievement with me the other day. As in many large cities, there are differences in socioeconomic status and educational attainment across the city. Here, we have a North/South divide: northend schools historically outperform their southend counterparts, just as the northern half of the city is in the higher end of the socioeconomic scale. We often think we know the reasons why students struggle and fail – lack of parental involvement, cultural differences, poor schools – but I heard a different take on this.
Lack of parental involvement — manifested by weak parent/teacher contact/communication, lack of support for homework, reading, good study habits or work ethic — is both cultural and economic. If several generations of a family can see that they have made no economic progress despite their efforts in school, they are not likely to value education as a way to improve the lives of the next generation. And some families who still believe in hard work are often unable to engage with their child’s school due to their own work demands. People making minimum wage often need more than one job to make ends meet if they have children and that additional work time is time they can’t spend at home supporting their child’s education or working with teachers to ensure their child is making progress.
But there is another aspect of this I hadn’t realized. An unstable or marginal family structure can undermine the work in those precious few hours in other ways. Two factors were laid out for me: mobility/school changes and summer vacation.
This veteran educator told me that, in his experience, kids who completed grades K-5 in the same school performed better on standardized tests than those who arrived in the school where they would be tested in the 3rd or 4th grade. There is a clear advantage to students having a consistent school experience, being able to make friends, to bond with teachers, to feel comfortable and confident (I mentioned confidence earlier and while it may not be a reliable metric, I think it’s an indicator/predictor of success). Early learners need to feel supported and know that people care about their education. This is missing in the lives of kids who move around between schools. It can also mean their home life isn’t stable. Varying custodial arrangements, different households, inconsistent parenting/role modeling can confuse and undermine a young kid. Not to say that older kids don’t need that, too, but building a foundation where kids know how to learn and that value of learning, the confidence that comes with mastery, can help the older student stay on course.
But what about summer vacation? What can be wrong there? It’s an anachronism, a relic of an agrarian past that is easily 100 years out of date. But how is it harmful? Turns out, it’s not so much what they do over the break, it’s what students don’t do.
Ten/twelve weeks of idleness for a latchkey kid with working parents, maybe working 2 or more jobs, can freeze a student in their tracks. Those few hours of school attendance and socializing are important in the intellectual and social development, their need to find their place and realize their potential. If their summer is unstructured and devoid of any enrichment, they can actually lose what they learned, like an athlete losing muscle tone or a musician losing their chops. Latchkeys kids with the TV for company aren’t prepared for returning to school like their peers who take vacations, go to museums or camps, and are supported while they’re out of school. Ten/twelve weeks out of the learning environment, when they are already at a disadvantage, will stop a kid’s progress and if it continues, will probably have a cumulative effect by the time they reach middle school. They’re in review/catchup mode while other kids are breaking new ground and that can eat away at their confidence and sense of belonging. It’s not to hard to imagine a young student starting to doubt school is for them, that there is a any point to it.
Proposed changes to the school calendar that would shrink summer break or distribute it through the year are usually framed as being more realistic, making kids more prepared for life. And that argument makes sense. Spreading the 36 weeks (more or less) of attendance around with 2-3 week breaks would be interesting to study. I never considered it as a serious disadvantage for poorer kids but it makes sense.
Making housing more stable for students, either through subsidies or other assistance, might make a big difference in the achievement gap. It sounds like meddlesome big brother-ish interference but these are kids who could use a big brother, someone to look out for them. I would like to see the test results for kids who are struggling with the state-mandated tests cross-referenced with changes in home address or custodial responsibility. If there is something to this and no one has acted on it, what a disaster.