Summer Learning Program Seeks to Close Opportunity Gap

At the end of the school year, summer vacation can be an exciting time for many upper and middle class kids in the Washington DC area. They look forward to vacations and summer camps that would engage, excite, and reinforce their educational needs. However, the same cannot be said for poor kids living in Washington D.C. While the D.C. government funds summer programs through the public school system, the majority of poor kids spend summer vacations without access to many educational activities. Emma Brown of the Washington Post, quoted Matthew Boulay, the interim chief executive of the Baltimore-based National Summer Learning Association as saying that “There’s a real disconnect between how much we know about the negative impact of summer learning loss and what is actually being done in terms of policy and programming.” He suggests that the school system spends nine months educating the nation’s children, but that in the summer months a great deal of what they have learned is lost. While many of the upper and middle class kids spend their summer vacation bolstering their education and other skills, the poor kids forget much of what they have learned in the previous school year. Emma Brown explains that the D.C. public school system provided 10,720 slots in their summer program for children last year; however, this year only 5,100 slots were offered due to shrinking budgets which forced the school system to “curtail summer offerings.” Many private organizations like the Horizons Greater Washington, the Wallace and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations, and the Wal-Mart Foundation are providing funding so that children from low-income families would attend camps like the one held at the Maret School in Woodley Park. The goal is to provide an educational program alongside all the fun-filled activities of summer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/summer-learning-program-seeks-to-close-opportunity-gap/2011/07/22/gIQA1JvObI_story.html