Summertime and the livin' easy-NOT

Today starts the beginning of summer bridge work for Nik. For the past couple of months I have been bombarded with articles and commercials telling me that children can lose up to 40% of what they have learned in school over the summer. Thanks for the guilt, Sylvin.

So I gear up for the challenge--bridge workbook, spelling word lists, lots of book options for 300 minutes of reading each month. Hoping that come the first day of school, he will be ready. Knowing that it will be a fight every week to get him to do these tasks.

Here are the two major issues I have with it all:

First, as we review and read all summer, I know that not every parent in Nik's school will be called to action. So when school starts in the fall there will still be a great need for review. A friend with adult children recently told me that she paid her kids $1 a page for each workbook page they did over the summer. She saw it as a great investment because she rarely had to help them with the homework during the school year.

Second, if educators have all this scientific data about knowledge lost over the summer, why isn't there a bigger push for year-round school? I'm not scientist, but it seems obvious that if you lessen the duration of the break time, you lessen the percentage of loss.

The current school calendar is antiquated, created at a time when there were a lot more farmers and children were needed in the summer to help out on the family farm. If rural areas want to keep this calendar, that is fine, but here in the suburbs where employment for parents is the norm, a year-round school year seems more practical. My husband reminds me that we live in a time of yearly budget cuts for schools, where school staff don't know at the end of the year whether or not they will be returning in the fall.

I, for one, would be in full support of a tax increase for schools if it meant year-round school and a more efficient education for our children.