The Focused Student: The purpose-driven summer school
The sun shines longer, days are warmer, and the grass feels good on bare feet. It must be summer and with that comes the payoff on a decision made months ago. To adopt Shakespeare slightly, “To be or not to be (in summer school), that is the question.”
The traditional school year is nine months long, reflecting our nation’s early agrarian heritage. During that period, schools operated from late fall to spring, minimizing the loss of vital child labor in the fields at critical times.
As the industrial revolution advanced, people increasingly lived in cities, but the school year remained on agricultural standard time, leaving children with free summers in which to work or play. Not wanting to see time wasted, many well-to-do families sent their children to summer camps where it was hoped they would socialize, civilize and perhaps have fun.
Fast forward to the 1960s, the space race, and a pervasive national concern that America was underperforming educationally. The summers of America’s youth were soon filled with science camps, space camps, engineering camps and summer school courses that emphasized the sciences and math. The notion of summer as a time to make up national educational deficiencies resurfaced in the 1980s with a report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, which suggested that American students were falling behind in the world of education and that summer school would provide the cure.
Funding (and particularly public funding) for summer school was traditionally tied to the number of teaching hours for a particular course. The way to cram a regular semester course into the six weeks of summer school was with four-hour-a-day classes and this became the norm. It is a norm that hasn’t changed, despite changes in technology that greatly enhance our options for delivering education.
As public education budgets waned in the late 1990s, summer school became an unaffordable luxury and public funding in most places ceased, with some exceptions for special needs students.
Private schools have always charged a fee for summer school and public schools followed suit, using educational foundations as the vehicle for collecting tuition. Most foundations charge a fee and allow students from any area to attend, which increases options for students and parents. Public school in areas that are economically disadvantaged rely on corporate, business and philanthropic foundations to help fund summer school tuition for those unable to pay. In fact, a local consortium of private schools has for years given disadvantaged students an opportunity to attend a private school summer school.
That, in brief, is the history of where summer school came from and what it has been. In my next column, I will discuss what how summer school is being transformed into a focused, purpose-driven offering that responds to contemporary educational needs, making use of contemporary educational tools.
See you next month. Enjoy the rest of your summer!
--
ROBERT FRANK is the executive director of the Hillside School and Learning Center in La Cañada. He holds a master’s of science degree in special education and has more than 40 years of teaching experience. His column appears on the last Thursday of each month. He can be reached at frank@hillsideforsuccess.org.
