(Student) Slip 'n Slide®

I’ve been around long enough to understand that one new study shouldn’t be cause for celebration. But yesterday when EdWeek wrote up a study on summer learning deficits [subscription required for the full article] that carried tremendous policy implications, I was a little taken aback when I got to this section:

Daria L. Hall, the assistant director for K-12 policy development for the Washington-based Education Trust, a nonprofit group that promotes high academic standards for disadvantaged children, worries that the findings will take policymakers’ focus off the need to close a different kind of gap.

“We can’t allow the problems of the out-of school inequities to overshadow the problems of the in-school inequities,” she said. “However way you look at it, low-income kids and kids of color get less than their fair share of quality teaching, curriculum, and resources.”

The study traced about two-thirds of the gap in achievement between high SES and low SES students in 9th grade to elementary school summer deficits. The remaining third was traceable to differences already evident before the students began 1st grade. The study, conducted by Karl Alexander and colleagues at Johns Hopkins, found no statistically significant differences between the gains of high and low SES kids during the school year.

Presumably, Hall is taking issue with the conclusion that SES, accumulated, made all the difference. We know poor kids get fewer advantages in education (as evidentiary support see here or here), but this study says that, at least in urban districts with high concentrations of poverty, there isn’t a large difference between one bad school and another. Further, since Baltimore’s population mirrors many cities across the country, urban districts could implement new school calendars to ameliorate within-district achievement gaps. Hall’s point is well-taken that this step wouldn’t fix all achievement disparities, but it too casually dismisses what a district can do.

While it isn’t a new concept for researchers to argue for restructuring school calendars, this study utilized the best dataset available. Past investigations analyzed summer learning loss between kindergarten and first grade; Alexander included fall and spring tests (to measure summer and school-year learning) from 1st-5th grades, and continued to follow the students until they were 22. This allowed him to track whether students completed high-level coursework in high school or went on to college. Previous studies haven’t gone this far; past analyses found that summer learning differences matter, but they hadn’t yet systematically traced those effects over time. Alexander shows empirically what we’ve all assumed: home life matters in educational attainment, and, if the numbers are generalizable, it matters more. I’m not ready to lump this study in as just one more for the pile.