Does Summer Slide Make Children Forget What They Have Learned?
The idea is so ingrained that we do not even question it – while our children spend their summer holidays, sleep, watch TV, swim and play camp, all the precious knowledge that they received during the school year melts away.
Summer learning loss. Summer slide. Summer brain drain. We read about it on parent sites and school newsletters and it is a cause for concern. When we’re told that all the impressive knowledge our kids have just learned will flow right out of their ears somewhere between episodes 15 and 20 of SpongeBob, it’s tempting to join that math textbook club you’ve heard. how a couple of moms talked. around the last day of school.
But in fact, on average, our children may not lose as much knowledge as we once thought. University of Texas professor and researcher Paul T. von Hippel writes for Education Next that he used to be a big supporter of summer school losses, but now his faith is shaken. He and a colleague have tried – and failed – to replicate the results of the classic 30-year study of Baltimore elementary school students, which von Hippel calls the most famous study on the topic.
How did a result that seemed so obvious in 1980s Baltimore turn into smoke when we tried to validate it using national data around 2010? Were kids so different in the 80s? Was Baltimore such a strange place?
No. But the way we test and measure student performance has changed dramatically since elementary school.
Many of us – parents, teachers, politicians, even most researchers – take standardized test scores at face value; we interpret the assessments as if they reflect the children’s skills in a neutral, mirror-like manner. But in the 1980s, some scores could be misleadingly reflected, like a mirror in a funny house. Results from the 1980s ranked children in more or less correct order, with more advanced students ahead of less advanced students. But they distorted the distances between the children, making some of the gaps appear larger or smaller than they actually were.
Today we try to control the complexity of the issue as part of the way we measure and compare results; this was not the case when the Baltimore study began. And while the performance gaps are real in themselves – children from low-income families will come to kindergarten behind their middle-class peers – summer vacations from now on are not necessarily the reason for its growth.
This does not mean that all summer training is pointless; of course not. You definitely need to go to your local library a lot. You should look for ways to have fun activities in the summer that will make them think; home science experiments, playing with a math component, or visiting a local science center and natural history museum are great options.
Von Hippel writes that for a student in particular who struggled during the school year, summer may be the perfect time to close the gap a bit. But for the most part, if your kids aren’t working out their workbooks every morning or writing essays about their trips to the beach, don’t worry too much. Most likely, in the fall, they will still fall to the ground.