Heat waves and humidity, sweat and sunburns are not the only pitfalls to summer, as the infamous summer achievement gap lies daunting in our future. Come September too many bundles of joy will come prancing back into our classroom having forgotten already mastered skills, putting them even farther behind. Every year students around the country suffer from a lack of academic stimulation and consequently lose substantial amounts of academic knowledge. Perhaps this year, a few less students will fall into that gap and be fortunate enough to benefit from a summer learning program.
The Baltimore Sun recently reported that the Walmart Foundation has awarded the National Summer Learning Association a grant of 11.5 million dollars to be used to fund high-quality summer learning programs. Over the next three years, ten fortunate cities will be able to use this money and hopefully close the gap just a bit more. Baltimore is one of those cities, being awarded $615,000 to go towards summer learning programs, more specifically Building Educated Leaders for Life, known as BELL.
The BELL program provides students a full day of learning with a heavy emphasis on reading and math but it does not just end there. In the afternoon students will be able to participate in science and athletics. Through this enrichment summer program, students will learn the necessary skills to advance in academics while simultaneously gaining confidence and become invested in their own learning. "When students get the skills and support they need to invest in their own success, they discover that they can be scholars, said executive director Erin Hodge-Williams.” This summer 300 middle-school-aged Baltimore students will get the high-quality summer opportunity that they deserve.
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I feel as if we have all experienced the frustration of the first day of school after a long vacation. We’re not as nearly refreshed as we would have hoped, and our students seem to have more energy than when they left. Yet more importantly, as Elyssa brought up in her post, it seems as if our class has forgotten everything we have taught them so far. At first, I was really interested to read the article about the BELL summer program here in Baltimore. It seems like a wonderful plan: keep the students active and engaged over the summer so that they aren’t so behind once school starts. But this plan almost seems to allude to a much larger problem, the fact that students do come in behind, once again, every September. I feel as if the design of our school system has ultimately created this problem. Yet we’ve heard of places where they are countering this problem with great solutions. Places like KIPP and HCZ have an extended school year, maximizing as much of their time as possible. These schools are holding themselves responsible and accountable for the education of their students. They’ve figured out a way to make sure that these kids don’t fall behind by giving them a shortened-summer break. These schools have found a simple solution to a design flaw in our school system. They are reforming the education that they provide for their students. I definitely give credit, however, to the BELL program for attempting to solve a persistent problem. They’re doing what they can to help students stay ahead of the game over the summer. Yet what about our public school systems? Shouldn’t they share in the responsibility as well?
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