Private Summer Schools Stir Controversy In California

 

The Los Angeles Times (7/12, Ceasar) reports the popularity of high school summer courses run by nonprofit associations in “affluent areas” has prompted a debate on education inequality. Nonprofits lease facilities from high schools and charge hundreds of dollars per course for students to take classes that will make them more attractive on college applications. The organizations who run the classes “sidestep state law” by remaining independent of the school districts in which they teach. Critics argue that the courses “private public school, undercut California’s guarantee of a free public education for all and contribute to an already wide inequity in educational opportunity.”

Effectiveness Of Summer School Investigated

 

NPR (7/8, Seidel) reports in its “Ed” blog that “we have no idea” whether summer school programs for students are effective. One expert interviewed pointed out that there’s never been a push to collect data on the effectiveness of summer school because so little attention gets paid to it. Some summer school programs are for students who failed remedial work to bring them up to grade level, while other students attend summer school to make up for credits lost due to absences during the school year. These students attend with the goal of remaining on grade level with their peers. Efforts in the Los Angeles Unified School District and at schools in Illinois have kept students on track during the summer months and helped prevent the summer slide in progress.