Executive Director's Report: Summer school: A new paradigm for today's demanding challenges
By Anne L. Bryant
8/12/03 -- Summer school brings back memories -- and not always good ones. I'm sure you've all heard children say: "Do I have to? It's so boring." "It's just more school. I want to play." "I'll do my summer reading. Isn't that enough?"
Hold everything. The old definitions of summer school have just gotten up-ended in Charles County, Md.
On a warm day in mid-July, I was invited by the assistant superintendent, John Cox, and board members Col. Don Wade and Cecil Marshall to Charles County for a wonderful tour of the district's Summer Academy.
This four-week program serves 2,200 elementary school and 900 middle school students out of a total K-12 enrollment of 25,000. The program is in its sixth year for elementary school students and its third year for middle school students.
The Summer Academy is different from the usual summer program for some very clear reasons:
• From the outset, the academy is positioned as an honor. Parents receive a letter in the spring that might start out with: "Dear parent, Congratulations! Your son, Timothy, has been selected to attend the Charles County Summer Academy."
I wondered if all parents greet this letter with enthusiasm, and Cox said most do. But when parents balk, he makes a deal with them: They can opt out, but first they have to spend the first two days with their child observing the program. He says 99.9 percent of the parents enroll their children once they see the opportunities the program offers.
• The costs, including transportation, are paid for by the district, thanks to support from the county and several foundation grants.
• The 310 teachers, out of the district's 1,500, are well compensated at their annual rate and love teaching in this program. Why? The class size is 10 to 1. And each class has a bright energetic assistant drawn primarily from teacher prep students at local schools of education.
• The program uses a curriculum that research shows works for children who are below grade level, including the Four-Blocks literacy model. This approach, developed by Pat Cunningham of Wake Forest University in North Carolina, combines phonemic awareness and balanced literacy.
What else is different about this program? The track record and the difference it makes in students' lives.
Students are carefully assessed both at the beginning of the Summer Academy and at the end. The results are crystal clear: These children not only don't lose ground in the summer, they make up as much as one-half to a full year in reading comprehension.
But beyond that, as I found on my visit to several schools, it's clear the children are having a blast. I saw pitched tents that made classrooms look like summer outings.
The children have one free period during the day which they use for an outdoor physical activity or an indoor art or music class.
This year, the middle school students asked to be allowed to use their free period to simply hang out in the cafeteria and talk to each other. Cox, at first, wondered whether he would adopt what seemed like a fairly strange request. But then he realized the program is built on customer input and customer needs, so why not listen to the children and approve their request?
Although the ambience at the Summer Academy is one of privilege, excitement, learning, and wonderful attention to every child, its goal is clear: improving the academic performance of low-achieving children. As a result, the percentage of minority and low socioeconomic students is far greater than among the county as a whole.
But in keeping with the demands of the No Child Left Behind Act, the ultimate goal for all of us must be to make sure that every student succeeds.
I asked Cox if all this attention to under-achieving children was accepted by the balance of the parents in the community, and he responded that the district also enrolls 2,000 students in summer enrichment and gifted and talented programs.
The challenge, of course, for a program like Charles County's, is resources. And I am sure that not only Cox but Superintendent Jim Richmond and the entire board of education wonder a great deal about the future of programs like the Summer Academy.
And I wonder about the ability of school boards across America to retain innovative, successful programs because I am hearing anecdotally that programs like these are being cut. What a terrible disservice to young people who are behind in reading and math if they do not get opportunities for the extra help they need to succeed.
NCLB presents us with great challenges and great goals, and all of us in education know the lower-achieving child demands more resources, more time, more love, and more attention.
Lower-achieving children also need higher-quality teachers, and what impressed me so much about the Charles County program was that the Summer Academy attracts the best and brightest teachers. The conditions for learning in this program are probably what drew them to the teaching profession in the first place.
Clear goals, an excellent curriculum, small class sizes, an assistant in every class, the ability to deal with each child one-on-one -- if what I saw in Charles County could be the norm nationwide, we would have no achievement gap.
So, a big congratulations to all summer schools that, like the one in Charles County, serve our neediest children with our most creative, talented, and dedicated teachers and administrators.
And congratulations to the school board in Charles County for its support and for the relationships it built with the county board and the foundations that have helped create such an excellent program.
By the way, the attendance rate all summer long was between 92 and 94 percent for the elementary students. These kids love this program.
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| Reproduced with permission from the 2003 issue of School Board News. Copyright © 2003, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789. |