pressure to raise test scores exacerbates
an already disturbing dynamic
by which the rich get richer
and the poor get worksheets.
But is there a real academic
“slide” from being out of school,
as judged by high-quality, nonstandardized
assessments? The
honest answer is: We just don’t
know. To its credit, the metaanalysis
that’s still the most
widely cited source on the topic,
conducted by Harris Cooper
and his colleagues, was accurately
titled “The Effects of Summer
Vacation on Achievement Test
Scores,” not “…on Learning.” But
even given that narrow focus,
it’s noteworthy that the declines
were mostly confined to “factual
and procedural knowledge”
such as “math computation and
spelling skills.”
In fact, some studies have shown
that the capacity for thinking not
only isn’t lost over the summer but
may show greater gains then than
during the school year. As Peter
Gray at Boston College, who reviewed
some of that research,
puckishly proposed, “Maybe instead
of expanding the school year
to reduce a summer slide in calculation,
we should expand summer
vacation to reduce the school-yearslide
in reasoning.”
What, after all, does it mean to
say that children can “lose what
they’ve learned?” True, time away
from school may entail less exposure
to academic content, but that
shouldn’t be equated with—nor
does it imply the absence of—
intellectual development. (Similarly,
let’s not forget that time
away from school doesn’t mean
kids can’t flourish in all sorts of
other ways: emotionally, physically,
artistically, socially, and morally.)
Too often, schooling consists
of cramming bits of knowledge
into students’ short-term memories—
by means of lectures, textbooks,
worksheets, quizzes, and
homework—all enforced with
grades. Many of these facts and
skills are indeed forgotten, but
that doesn’t mean that being out
of school is calamitous. Rather,
it suggests that we should reexamine
what too often takes place
in school.
Suppose our kids end up missing
a full year of school. When they
finally return, they may be unable
to recall some of what they were
told: the six stages of cell division,
or the definition of a simile, or the
approved steps for doing long division.
Heck, they’ll forget even
more facts once they’ve graduated.
(Haven’t you?) But over the
course of a summer or a year
spent at home, they are much less
likely to forget how to set up an
experiment to test their own hypothesis
(if, when they were last
at school, they had the chance
to do science), or how to write
a story that elicits a strong reaction
from a reader (if they had
been invited to play with prose
with that goal in mind), or what
it means to divide one number
into another (if they were helped
to understand mathematical
principles from the inside out).
Warnings about academic loss
are not just dubious; they’re dangerous.
They create pressure on
already-stressed-out parents to
do more teaching at home—
and, worse, to do more of the
most traditional, least meaningful
kind of teaching that’s geared
toward memorizing facts and
practicing lists of skills rather
than exploring ideas. Parents
may just assume this is what
instruction is supposed to look
like, partly because that’s how
they were taught (and no one
ever invited them to rethink this
model). And if standardized
tests rather than authentic kinds
of assessment will eventually be
used to evaluate their children,
parents, like teachers, will be
CURATED
FROM...
inclined to do what is really just
test prep.
We’ve been here before. Claims
of slippage in reading proficiency
over the summer have led to
an awful lot of kids, disproportionately
Black and Latino, being
sentenced to highly structured
remedial summer programs.
Richard Allington, a professor
at the University of Tennessee
at Knoxville who specializes in
this issue, points out that such
programs, or summer homework
assignments, aren’t necessary or
even sensible. Rather, he and his
colleagues recommend “easy and
continuing access to self-selected
books for summer reading’—
a solution that’s also much less
likely to cause kids’ interest in
reading”—a key predictor of proficiency—
to evaporate.
When schools are finally able
to open their doors again safely,
let’s not return to the status quo
ante-Covid, with its emphasis on
the kind of test-focused instruction
that can be lost. The good
news—at a time when we’re all
desperate for some—is that when
the learning was meaningful to
begin with, it doesn’t slip away.
Copyright © 2020 by Alfie Kohn.
Alfie Kohn is the
author of 14
books about
education,
parenting, and
human behavior who lectured
widely—including at Montessori
conferences—back when that
sort of thing was still possible.
For more of his work, please visit
www.alfiekohn.org.
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