I agree about the summer break. I'm not sure who those "upper-class students" were, but I know the vast majority of middle class kids in Penfield's elementary schools lost a lot during the summer. In fact, September was spent re-teaching the previous year's material so they could realistically deal with the next level of curriculum. Aside from being a waste of valuable learning time, this repetition also turns off a lot of students and is rightly seen as boring and unchallenging. For a long time I have thought that our agrarian-inspired school calendar is no longer justified. But I do think students (and educators) need breaks from school. As a result, in the mid-1990s I proposed to Penfield administrators that we lengthen the school year by 2 weeks while, simultaneously, breaking up the summer vacation. As a first suggestion, I thought we might have longer mid-winter (X-mas) and spring breaks and a 4-5 week summer break. To say this idea fell on deaf ears is an understatement. No one wanted to deal with the parents on this one or the cost considerations of having school buildings open and fully used for more days or possibly even paying staff (including teachers) more for their longer work year. One administrator even brought up the dislocation this change would cause for the camp and daycare industries as well as family vacation plans/expectations. Damn the priority of "best practices" leading to maximum student learning and engagement. In any case, if we do move forward with the Regional Academy, I think we should re-examine the school calendar with an open mind and look for ways to sustain some learning experiences during the times children are not in school. Due to the growing wealth gap in the US, there are less and less middle class families (and therefore less middle class students). And even those within that economic definition are not getting the support and interaction from parents and other adults that many people imagine. Put simply, if you have taught in the suburbs long enough, you have witnessed a great slippage in the school readiness and success of a lot of supposedly middle class students. In fact, those parents who do provide "creative" or meaningfully enriched learning experiences during vacation periods stand out exactly because they are becoming less and less common. Thus, almost all students (no matter their economic status or setting) need the kind of stimulation you are suggesting, Keith. In the setting we would ultimately like to create, of course, we would have students across the complete economic spectrum. So any effort to help children be learners outside of school would benefit all those children. Best to all, Neil -----Original Message----- From: Keith Rankin <keithwrankin@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: Regional School <regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Sun, Oct 16, 2011 5:51 pm Subject: [regional_school] Re: Income Inequality-The real cause of the urban school problem Last summer, Time Magazine ran a cover story on"The Case Against Summer Vacation," advocating that we abandon the agrarian concept of summer recess as students regress educationally from the experience. There was a graph that supported this notion for middle and lower-class students, though upper-class students' learning actually accelerated from having the summer "off." Because the upper-class acceleration in learning didn't support the thesis of the article it was dismissed other than to show that learning can continue. There was another graph that showed that while in the US we have less school days, we have up to twice as many instructional hours in a school year. Having read the "Income Inequality..." article I suspect that "enrichment" activities may have a greater impact on learning than we imagined. And perhaps one of the goals we may want to consider for The Regional Academy is recommending and or arranging (group discounts) various summer enrichment activities that wealthier students might enjoy (summer camp, trips to Europe, the Hamptons, Cape and Islands, etc.) You can download a scanned PDF of the story here: http://www.partnershiptoendpoverty.org/The_Case_Against_Summer_Vacation-Time%20Mag.pdf Keith keithwrankin@xxxxxxxxxxx 585.734.7295 cel | txt Subject: [regional_school] Re: Income Inequality-The real cause of the urban school problem From: Julie_Mitchell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To: regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx CC: regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:07:14 -0400 Thank you Bill and Neil. As one who is in the trenches, as far as one can be in a suburban district I type with a wink, we AND the students desperately need the Regional Academy. As a parent of a three year old boy, I pray that the public will open their eyes to the abuses of public education right now. Thank you for all the efforts, JMitchell -----regional_school-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: ----- To: regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx From: neilcho@xxxxxxx Sent by: regional_school-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date: 10/14/2011 11:36AM Subject: [regional_school] Re: Income Inequality-The real cause of the urban school problem This op-ed piece is dead on. It also leaves little room for optimism, at least on the macro level. Given the current me-first, I'm-a-victim stance of many advantaged Americans (and their stranglehold on our national legislative process), it is hard to see how we will stabilize, much less turn around, the growing income gap. Aside from educational consequences, this current drift and the mean-spiritedness that surrounds it has also had profound effects on our national health care system and people's access to it. Soon, I fear, it will find outward expression in social unrest by those being demonized by the Right Wing and the well-off as "the problem" (immigrants, unions, minorities, poor people, etc.) . It is in this context of irrational scapegoating that I believe we all have to do what we can on a "small stage" to affect positive change, at least at the micro (individual, local, etc.) level. So, what's up with our regional school project? Is there a way to keep pushing and a reason to keep working on putting some flesh on its bones? Best to all, Neil Chodorow -----Original Message----- From: William Cala <wcala@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: regional_school <regional_school@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Fri, Oct 14, 2011 8:26 am Subject: [regional_school] Income Inequality-The real cause of the urban school problem This op. ed. is drawn from a very powerful new book, Whither Opportunity, just published by the Russell Sage Foundation. https://www.russellsage.org/publications/whither-opportunity ECONOMIC INEQUALITY: THE REAL CAUSE OF THE URBAN SCHOOL PROBLEM Chicago Tribune Op. Ed. -- October 06, 2011 By Greg J. Duncan and Richard J. Murnane America's urban public schools are in trouble: Student test scores are low and dropout rates are high. Recent remedies proposed include everything from reducing the power of teachers unions and opening more charter schools to ending test-based accountability. But what if education critics are focused on the wrong problem? Implicit in these very different proposals is the assumption that urban schools are failing because they are run badly, and that the solution lies in improving their management. Over the last five years, we have been involved in a wide-ranging research project that provides compelling evidence to the contrary. Our findings show that the root of the problems facing urban schools can be found in gradual but extremely powerful changes in the nation's economy — not the least of which is the increasingly unequal distribution of family incomes. Policies that address the consequences of these changes, which recent poverty figures show have worsened, are more likely to improve the life chances of the children from low-income families. For the first three-quarters of the 20th century, economic growth, fueled in large part by the increasing educational attainments of successive generations of Americans, was a rising tide that lifted the boats of the rich and poor alike. During the most recent three decades, by contrast, the fruits of economic growth have not been widely shared and the gap between the incomes of the nation's rich and poor families has grown enormously. Little noticed, but vital for our nation's future prosperity, is the equally dramatic widening of the gap between the educational attainments of children growing up in rich and poor families. Between 1978 and 2008, the gap between the average mathematics and reading test scores of children from high- and low-income families grew by a third. This growing test score gap has been reflected in a growing gap in completed schooling. Over the last 20 years, the rate of affluent children who completed college increased by 21 percentage points, while the graduation rate of children from low-income families increased by only 4 percentage points. Growing economic inequality contributes in a multitude of ways to a widening gulf between the educational outcomes of rich and poor children. In the early 1970s, the gap between what parents in the top and bottom quintiles spent on enrichment activities such as music lessons, travel and summer camps was approximately $2,700 per year (in 2008 dollars). By 2005-2006, the difference had increased to $7,500. Between birth and age 6, children from high-income families spend an average of 1,300 more hours than children from low-income families in "novel" places — other than at home or school, or in the care of another parent or a day care facility. This matters, because when children are asked to read science and social studies texts in the upper elementary school grades, background knowledge is critical to comprehension and academic success. Historically, we have relied on our public schools to level the playing field for children born into different circumstances, but in recent years, the gaps in achievement and behavior between high- and low-income children have only grown wider. Why? For one thing, residential segregation by income has meant that poor children are concentrated in the same schools to a much greater extent today than 40 years ago. As a result, children from low-income families are far more likely to have classmates with low achievement and behavior problems, which have a negative effect on their own learning. Children from poor families are also especially likely to attend schools with high rates of student turnover during the school year, and there is clear evidence that students learn less under such circumstances. In Chicago's public schools, 10 percent of students change school every year and it is not uncommon for some classrooms to have five new students arrive during the year. Research shows that students learn less if they attend schools with high student turnover during the school year. Teacher quality contributes to the weak academic performance of low-income students as well. Schools serving high concentrations of poor, nonwhite and low-achieving students find it difficult to attract and retain skilled teachers. When teachers leave after only a short period of time, there is little payoff to investments in improving their skills, and it is difficult to coordinate instruction among teachers, a feature that characterizes effective schools. Americans' reactions to income inequality range from dismay and indignation to a belief that inequality is simply the price of the chance to achieve the American dream. Debating the merits of teachers unions, charter schools and test-based accountability all fail to address the core problem, which is that growth in family income inequality has eroded educational opportunities. Promising policy responses to this problem include early direct investments in children, particularly through high-quality preschool programs that teach the basic cognitive skills and socio-emotional skills that children need to thrive in schools, and income supports such as the earned income tax credit that raise the income of low-wage workers and have been shown to strengthen poor families and boost children's school successes. We do not mean to imply that school policies do not matter; they do. But only by enacting policies that address the underlying problem of economic inequality will our country remain a place where education opens the door to opportunity and upward social mobility — the kind of society in which all Americans can take pride. - Greg J. Duncan is an education professor at the University of California at Irvine. Richard J. Murnane is a professor of education and society at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. They are co-editors of "Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools and Children's Life Chances," published by the Russell Sage Foundation and the Spencer Foundation.