As part Baltimore City’s summer school program this year, 12 middle schools are offering a program to advanced math and science students in which students will build soapbox cars to be raced at Lake Clifton Park early next month. The program is part of the city’s “Grand Prix” of summer learning initiative, which also includes robotics competitions, foreign language immersion, and other enrichment opportunities. In addition, students at 22 elementary schools will be able to engage in similar projects involving cars. Many of the course offerings of the “Grand Prix” initiative reflect the district’s priority to emphasize the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) curriculum again this summer. Last summer, the programs offered reduced summer learning loss for 70% of participants. This year, teachers leading the project based learning courses received weeks of professional development. Despite many lauding the district’s innovation, the summer school program nevertheless faced budget cuts earlier this year and lost $1.5 million in federal stimulus money.
Although I applaud the city’s summer efforts, the article raised the question of why these innovations are only being implemented during the summer months. On the one hand, I am quite impressed with the summer school program that the city has put together, especially the project-based soapbox car and robotics courses. These programs directly address the STEM initiative in an engaging way and allow students to engage in hands-on experience that will benefit them not only in preventing the summer setback but also as they move on toward higher education. On the other hand, I question why these innovative approaches are only being pursued by the district for select groups of advanced students during the summer. As we discussed in class, many non-charter traditional public schools could experiment with these less traditional, more engaging methods if they wanted to do so. Even if it is argued that the district does not have the money to implement this in its traditional public schools during the school year, the article implies that the district nevertheless has the institutional knowledge to train its math, science, and technology teachers to do these kinds of projects with their classes on a smaller scale.
As Linda Eberhart, the executive director of the district’s teaching and learning office says, “We learned that we've got to make something so engaging, so compelling that this is the place to be. You can't have a kid do math six hours a day unless they don't know they're doing it." Shouldn’t her comments apply not only for the summer months but also for every day of the school year?
1 comment:
Cara, I absolutely understand what you are saying. The Summer School Innovation program is an excellent way to advanced student learning that would otherwise be stifled or more often decline during the summer months.
However, I feel that Baltimore Public Schools and the nations public schools for that matter, needs to seriously rethink how the school year is designed. In districts across the county, the school year roughly consists of 185 school days with about 75 days off in between each school year. If you look at the nations with top PISA scores, you can find commonalities among the top ranking. These nations have school years that last roughly 220 days and do not have what Americans know as a "summer break". I personally feel that this different approach to public education is a huge reason why America lags behind. The average student coming from a low-socio economic household comes into the new school year further behind than when they left for the summer. Their wealthier counter parts come into the school year further advanced than when they left for the summer simply because they are getting academic attention at home during the time off. Solution? Don’t have a summer break just longer fall, winter, and spring breaks.
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