Summer School Is No Vacation for Students

While most of his classmates chatted, Fidel Pablo focused intently on a novel, “Parrot in the Oven.”

Fidel knows he has to pass 11th-grade English this summer and world history next year -- classes he failed during the past school year -- to graduate on time next spring.

“I want to pay more attention than I did during the year because I don’t want to take it over again,” the 17-year-old said recently, seated in a classroom without air conditioning at Alexander Hamilton High School on the Westside. “And there’s less time, so you have to keep up.”

Fidel’s six-week summer school class requires six fewer novels than the English class he took during the regular school year. It also has 16 more students, and that’s after 10 dropped the class. At least five others are in danger of failing again.

For many high school students like Fidel, summer school offers a last chance -- an opportunity to make up credits toward graduation and to increase their prospects of passing more advanced classes next year.

Nearly 33,000 Los Angeles Unified School District students this summer are repeating a class they failed last school year. Statewide, the situation is much the same.

But with 10% to 15% of the students enrolled in Los Angeles summer classes dropping out and a similar percentage failing their courses, the stakes are high.

“What’s the alternative?” said Harris Cooper, professor of psychology and director of the education program at Duke University. “If they don’t take it during the summer, they have to take it during the school year, and it’ll put an additional burden on the student or replace other material they won’t get exposed to at all.”

Still, some educators are uncertain whether students can learn in 30 days the material they didn’t comprehend in 180 days. Though summer school classes are longer, students still receive 60 fewer hours of instruction than they would in a class during the regular school year.

Although some teachers and administrators say they are uncertain of its overall effectiveness, they agree that summer school has benefits. Students tend to have fewer distractions with other classes and activities, greater motivation and more familiarity with the material.

Traditionally, there have been two kinds of summer school classes, both of which have been mostly free to students in the state’s public schools. Enrichment classes allow students to take courses they can’t fit into their regular schedule or those that will help them get ahead in such subjects as math or science. Remedial classes, which make up at least 75% of summer school enrollment in most districts, are offered to students who have failed or nearly failed key subjects during the school year.

In both types of courses, class sizes in districts around the state have generally grown in recent years.

And those numbers may become even larger as high school students take courses to prepare them for the California High School Exit Exam, which will be required for the graduating class of 2006. Students could earn all of the required credits to graduate and still not earn a diploma if they can’t pass the exit exam.

A 2000 Duke University review of studies about summer school around the country found that it was most effective at the high school level. Students who took summer school classes earned better scores on those courses’ content, but not necessarily in later, more advanced courses, the review found.

Teachers said the intensive six-week, four-hour-a-day format is more successful for some subjects than others.

Algebra teachers said the format is excellent for math because students can receive more personal attention.

During the school year, math teachers often teach a lesson in class, leaving the students to do the corresponding problem sets at home. During summer school, the problems are done during the longer class period, when the teacher can offer more attention and immediate help.

“I love it,” said Dina Kraemer, an algebra teacher at Hamilton High School. “It’s better because it’s concentrated, focused. You have them for a solid amount of time, and they focus on one thing.”

Travon Pouchie, one of Kraemer’s 40-plus students, said he had learned more in three weeks of summer school than during ninth and 10th grades, largely because he’s able to focus.

“I wasn’t paying attention before. I was either absent or distracted,” the junior said. “I’m getting older and I realize I gotta graduate from high school.”

For Fidel’s English teacher, Yvette Battle, summer school has more obstacles than the regular year.

Battle has 36 students in her summer school class. During the school year, a state mandate caps the number of students in ninth- and 11th-grade English classes at 20.

“We have twice as many kids and less time to work with them,” Battle said on a recent day as most of her class read its only summer novel. During the school year, the class reads five novels independently and two as a group.

She said her standards for grading remain the same during summer school, but the class “is easier to pass because there’s less material to learn.”

Still, at least 10% of her summer school class is failing.

Dan Brewer, an English teacher at Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles, said he has had a similar summer school failure rate.

When students fail a class or pass without mastering the coursework, Brewer said, they can become frustrated or fall so far behind that they fail more classes, lose credits and become ineligible for graduation. He said it also affects his ability to teach more advanced lessons.

For example, many students move on to the second semester of ninth-grade English after failing the first, or advance to 10th-grade English without repeating ninth grade. The teacher then must not only teach the more advanced material, but also help the student catch up with earlier coursework.

“It just becomes more difficult,” Brewer said. “It makes your plate more full.”

And the demands of passing the high school exit exam are piling more on that plate for teachers and students, Brewer and other educators said.

“The concern is that students might fulfill the credit requirements, but they won’t get their diploma,” said Howard Yao, assistant summer school principal at Lincoln. “That might cause quite a bit of controversy and stress for the school and the students as well.”

The state will now provide summer school and other extended-day funding to schools for students who aren’t making adequate progress toward passing the exit exam. Students can take the exit exam multiple times beginning in the 10th grade.

Los Angeles Unified has a variety of programs aimed at helping struggling students throughout the year. The district is offering after school, Saturday school and night school programs to give students who are in danger of failing or who have failed a class a chance to make up credits, and other intervention programs to help students struggling with the exit exam.

“I don’t believe waiting to give youngsters academic intervention helps them,” said John Leichty, director of the district’s Beyond the Bell program, which oversees summer school and other intervention programs. “Once they fail, our work becomes a hundred times more difficult. Once they fail, their work becomes a hundred times more difficult.”