Save kids’ summer from adults’ best intentions
Instead of a self-serving opportunity to build one-size-fits-all structures, give students the space and ability to pursue a diversity of community-provided summer opportunities that parents crave
When I find my mind drifting back to experiences in my childhood, I often find myself going to somewhat random experiences: summer camps, meandering bike rides with friends, basketball camps, or sitting in my room reading A Separate Peace while listening to Parachutes on repeat (the only Coldplay album I vigorously defend, but that’s for another post…).
I’ve come to realize that I go back to moments like these not only because they represent a sort of halcyon composite of my youth, but because they represent experiences in my life when I was able to make my own decisions, follow my interests, and operate outside the confines of a highly controlled school environment. They were milestones in the process of self-determination and independence that I can still look back on with significance decades later.
I spent the past few weeks talking to a lot of friends about this and many of them admit to going back to experiences very thematically similar to mine (going to live with grandparents for a month each summer, making money mowing neighborhood lawns, etc.). Perhaps it’s just my extended bubble of friends, but my bet is that most people are wired this way.
Most of the experiences happened completely outside of the traditional school experience, whose structures and design are often not hospitable to this sort of space, exploration, and discovery. (They should be, but that the topic of a different post.) Summers, extended breaks, and other “down times” have historically played a major role in this area.
But now I put myself in the shoes of a 12-year-old who not only lost a traditional summer last year, but could face losing it again this year. It’s why I have a lot of concern about some of the current narratives around “learning loss,” “COVID slide,” how many billions of dollars of income kids are poised to lose out on, and other deeply scary predictions about the past year’s impact on kids.
They’re being used to promote dramatic changes to the childhood experience, as states from New Mexico to Louisiana to Virginia have considered year-round schooling or shortening of this summer. Or, as former NYC mayor and presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg wrote in the New York Times, “the school year cannot end in May or June. Canceling summer vacation may not be a popular idea, but it is a national imperative during a historic crisis.”
For their part, the nation’s largest teachers unions are using this summer as an opportunity to expand the reach of district-created and union-influenced summer programming. In a joint five-point proposal for post-Covid education, the AFT and NEA call for “extending the school day, extending the school year, restructuring the school day or providing other tutoring and enrichment opportunities with school district employees and retired or aspiring educators,” “increasing learning time for students while maintaining negotiated labor standards in collective bargaining agreements,” and that “unions and districts should agree to create new staffing positions (with fair compensation) for those who want them.”
Instead of arguing to provide families with financial resources to experience and create a plethora of community-provided summer learning options, I read this as a clear attempt to use the influx of nonrecurring federal dollars to make permanent staffing hires to consolidate summer experiences within the school system structure. You don’t need a political science degree to understand the motivations here.
But what do parents want?
All of this led me to wondering what parents actually want for their kids this summer. A recently-commissioned survey of 1,000 parents across the country sought to figure that out. Given the narratives out there, I was truly unsure what families would say.
When asked to choose one statement that best reflects parent sentiment regarding this summer, most parents believe that summer should remain a time of free play and discovery for kids.
When asked what parents would prioritize for their children this summer if funding were not an issue, parents prefer different thing but physical activities like sports and outdoor exploration rank highest.
Inequitable access to summer and enrichment programming
As the Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli wrote in 2016:
“…there is a growing social-class gulf in spending on children’s enrichment and extracurricular activities — things like sports, summer camps, piano lessons, and trips to the zoo. As the upper-middle class grows larger and richer, it is spending extraordinary sums to enhance its kids’ experience and education, while other children must make do with far less.”
This is evidenced in this research by Kornrich and Furstenberg:
To bridge this gap, Petrilli argues for “enrichment savings accounts,” which would give parents access to funding to put toward “enrichment activities for their children — for sports, dance, summer camps, Boy and Girl Scouts, swim team, and all the rest.” It’s an idea that the Center for Reinventing Public Education’s Travis Pillow and Ashley Jochim developed out further in 2019.
Meanwhile, the federal government has appropriated an additional $190 billion for education and enrichment activities in the past year. In the latest round alone, Congress appropriated more than $122 billion to states and school districts to specifically tackle learning loss, provide summer learning opportunities, and enrichment activities done during afterschool. As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) mentioned at the time:
In the survey of 1,000 parents, there is clear support for putting some of these funds toward family-directed opportunities to bridge the enrichment gap:
Those are pretty massive results: 69% of parents support the idea, with only 9% opposing.
Some states are taking up this idea. In addition to the more than $3.2 BILLION going to school district in North Carolina, the state government of NC will be receiving $360 million from Congress to put toward activities that address student learning loss and provide summer enrichment and comprehensive afterschool programs in ways that meet the academic, social, and emotional needs of students.
A recently-introduced proposal would reserve around half of these funds ($170 million) to provide grants to families to put toward approved educational uses, like summer and afterschool programming, tutoring, therapies, courses, and other educational uses. Students would be eligible for $1,000, with a maximum of $3,000 per household.
It’s clear that the pandemic and school closures have had drastically different impacts on individual students. Some have fallen behind academically, while some are ahead. Some have lost access to needed therapeutic supports and services. Some kids have been isolated more than others, and the need to build or rebuild relationships in-person with peers and educators is top of the list.
Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach that assumes what is best for each and every child, it’s encouraging that some states are focusing on ways to give families the opportunity to identify approved programs, interventions, and services that meet those unique needs.
As I recently commented to a news group, "Given the amount of spending for this year, if a low-income kid wants to have an experience, like a camp that they haven't had the ability to pursue in the past, if those opportunities aren't afforded to them, then I think that money has been wasted."