Summer's
lease expires early as more kids return to school 'Calendar wars' are
in full swing as students crack their books - still dreaming of the
pool
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor from the August 14,
2003 edition
When Jamar Pittman
returned to St. Petersburg, Fla., from a trip last week, he discovered
he'd already missed three days of class.
"They are cutting into my vacation!" exclaims the hulking
sophomore as he walks out of St. Petersburg High School into the heavy
August heat. He might be forgiven the error. After all, who ever heard
of school on Aug. 4?
But as school districts race to compete - often searching for any edge
on students' test performance - summer is dwindling. Start dates are
sliding ever earlier, even creeping into July in some states. Labor
Day may soon mean cramming for midterms instead of shopping for No.
2 pencils.
Districts justify the change with the need to squeeze in more prep time
for state exams, or the desire to finish the fall semester before Christmas
break. But some wonder whether one of the most cherished rites of American
youth - a carefree summer of days at the town pool or working at the
local Dairy Queen - is lost in the process. Add to that the trend toward
lengthy required reading lists and schedules packed with math camp,
piano lessons, SAT prep courses, and college-résumé-building
activities, and summer - or an idealized view of it, at any rate - seems
to have slipped away.
"Kids are so curious. But if they don't have time to get out and
explore ... they won't be able to find out what more they want to learn,"
says Tina Bruno, director of Time to Learn, a nonprofit in San Antonio
that opposes year-round schools and early start dates. "Everything
our kids learn is not going to happen in the walls of a classroom."
Still, that notion of halcyon days spent swimming rivers, lying in fields,
and selling lemonade has long ceased to be a reality for most families
- a point that short-summer advocates are quick to make. For families
in which both parents work, 12 weeks with kids home can be a burden.
Most can't afford long summer camps, and kids may spend more time in
hot apartments watching TV than exploring
outside or playing make-believe.
"It's the elites who go to eight-week camps that are advertised
in the back pages of the New York
Times Magazine," says Charles Ballinger of the National Association
for Year-Round Education
in San Diego. "Those families that can afford to have at least
one parent home are a minority."
Mr. Ballinger would like to see summer shortened to six weeks, and more
time given throughout
the year. Not only does the year-round schedule keep kids from getting
bored, he says; it also keeps
them from forgetting too much from the year before.
Even that "summer slide" - the forgetting of last year's hard-won
learning - is tied to economics and class, according to a Johns Hopkins
University study. In it, low-income students lost ground each summer,
widening achievement gaps. Middle-class students are less likely to
lose reading and
math skills, says Ballinger, while low- income kids - who may not have
adults reading with them in the summer - often come back at a disadvantage.
Calendar wars: It's spiral
notebooks vs. inner tubes
The ideas of shortened
summers, year-round school, and early start dates are relatively recent.
In 1988, about half the nation's schools started their years before
Sept. 1, according to Market Data Retrieval in Shelton, Conn. Just 10
years later, that had risen to 71 percent.
The South has been especially eager to start school early, despite famously
hot, humid Augusts.
In Alabama this
year, 98 percent of students will be back in the classroom by Friday
according to Ms. Bruno. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Mississippi
are also starting earlier. Schools there don't always make summer much
shorter - school often ends by mid-May - but don't try telling that
to parents buying spiral notebooks in July.
In many areas, shorter summers have inspired a backlash, with vicious
calendar wars. Mothers bemoan the loss of lazy August days spent taking
kids to the pool. High schoolers complain they don't have enough time
for jobs.
In St. Petersburg, Jamar wasn't the only one to miss the first days
of class - and some were ready to make a federal case out of it. "What
happened to summer vacation?" asks sophomore Floyd Gray. "I
don't think Bush will be happy until we're going to school year round."
School administrators counter with the need to improve test scores,
retain knowledge, and squeeze the semester in before Christmas. Everything
from the cost of air conditioning to competing studies on how much kids
forget is thrown into the fray.
'They push, push, push kids'
"I want a 12-week summer," says Laura Lively Charlton. The
Huntsville, Ala., mother sent her third-grader back to school on Aug.
6, and she's already missing time by the pool. "Once school starts,
sports start, you have homework, they have to go to bed," she says.
"Kids need real downtime. I had that growing up."
Ms. Charlton tries to keep non-school time from becoming too scheduled:
She limits activities to swim team in the summer, and soccer and one
non-sports activity, like chess club, during the year.
"Free time
has shrunk," she says sadly. "They push, push, push kids."
This week, she noticed the lifeguards at the neighborhood pool doing
homework in the afternoons.
Not in Oklahoma City, though. This year, kids are enjoying a school-free
August for the first time in years. After parents petitioned the school
board - pointing out that it cost an extra $150,000 to cool schools
in August and bringing their kids to a meeting to make their case -
the board capitulated.
School will start Sept. 2.
"My son told them: 'We can't go to the pool when it would be the
best,' " says Barbara Bowersox, a lawyer who helped lead the fight
for a later start. The boy's other argument: He missed having his Aug.
13 birthday in the summer. For the past four years, he told the board,
school had actually started on his birthday.
Ms. Bowersox and her kids are relishing the extra weeks, and already
have plans: a trip to a nearby amusement park and digging for crystals
at the Great Salt Plains State Park. "We're going to the pool every
day of August that we can," she says. "We are enjoying our
summer."
Staff writer Abraham McLaughlin and Lynn Waddell,
in St. Petersburg, Fla., contributed to this report.
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