More Students Forced to Take Summer School

July 6 -- Forget the lazy days of summer.

For an increasing number of students across the country, reading and math are replacing swimming and video games as more children and teenagers are being told they have to go to summer school in order to pass to the next grade level.

New York is expecting 32 percent of all its public school students to attend its summer classes that started this week and in Chicago, 46 percent will be enrolled in school.

The summer school trend comes at a time when many school districts throughout the nation have moved to end what is known as social promotion. This is the practice of promoting students to the next grade so they move through the school system at the same rate as their peers.

“The increase in summer school programs and the end of social promotion are highly related,” said Prof. Michael Kirst of the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research. “All kids are putting in more school hours. That is a significant trend.”

Kirst said summer school presents a clear advantage for students who need special attention because classes are smaller and in many locales students work on a single, clear goal: passing standardized tests.

But while summer school offers a boost for students falling behind, some school districts said they fear they are short-changing eager students, who view summer school as a way to get ahead.

A Growing Trend

In New York, the nation’s largest school district, 319,000 students, or 32 percent, of the city’s 1.1 million students are registered to attend school this summer.

Last year, the school district had 228,000 students enrolled.

School administrators say this is in part due to the programs to end social promotion implemented this year. Of the more than 300,000 students enrolled in school 65,076 — or less than 10 percent — of them are required to do so, officials say.

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called the summer-school push “an attempt to try to turn the system into one withmuch, much higher standards.” “It won’t be easy, but I think the chancellor [of education] and the Board ofEducation are moving in the right direction.”