The April 2007 issue of American Sociological
Review offers new insights as to why low-income
children lag behind their more privileged classmates in
high school graduation rates and college attendance. In
"Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap," Johns
Hopkins University sociologists Karl Alexander, Doris
Entwisle and Linda Steffel Olson find the difference in
children's future academic success can be explained, in
part, by their experiences during their summer
vacations.
The study contends that there is a summer learning gap
between lower- and higher-income children, and it begins
during elementary school. Higher-income children's home
environments are resource-rich; they are more likely to
have access to magazines and books, and to have their
parents read to them, than are lower-income children. This
gap accumulates over the years and, once the children get
to high school, results in unequal placements in college
preparatory tracks. The gap also increases the chances that
children from low socio-economic families will drop out of
high school and decreases their chances of attending a
four-year college.
The researchers studied 790 Baltimore public school
children from the first grade through age 22. They used
testing data from the Baltimore City public school system
records to track learning patterns, school records and
student reports to identify students' high school
curriculum placement, and student interview data to
determine high school completion and college attendance.
According to the authors, these findings are
significant because when disadvantaged children get to high
school, their achievement test scores--which play an
important role in academic placement--are far below
average, compared to those of higher-income children.
Because of lower scores, these children are then associated
with higher risks of dropping out of high school and not
continuing on to college.
"What we are able to do is trace back in time the
disparities between the two groups of children and, to a
very substantial degree, we trace the difference back to
summer learning differences over the elementary school
years," said lead author Karl Alexander, the John Dewey
Chair of the Sociology
Department.
Alexander said he believes that programs aimed at
decreasing the achievement gap between lower- and
higher-income students should begin in elementary school or
even earlier. To be most effective, however, such programs
should provide year-round attention to disadvantaged
children to offset the out-of-school conditions that hold
them back.
"What it boils down to is that we need to stop these
children from falling behind," he said. "We have to help
them have experiences over the summer months that build
academic skills, such as high quality summer school
programs, or year-round schooling. In a nutshell,
disadvantaged children depend more on school-like
experiences in acquiring academic skills in order to
succeed, whereas higher-income children can and do acquire
these skills at home."
The article also points out that some of the punitive
measures in the federal No Child Left Behind Act may be
misdirected, as the assessment tests measure both
academic-year learning and summer learning, over which the
schools have no control.
For a copy of the study, go to:
www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/
April07ASRFeature.pdf.
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