Arne Duncan suggests year-round school as a solution to the summer slide. I disagree.

Posted on: http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2014/06/05/the-impact-of-the-summer-slide/

Arne Duncan has suggested that year-round school is the solution to the summer slide.  Thanks to the common core, year-round school will make things worse.

Research tells us that those living in poverty have the least access to books. Students living in poverty also show the most summer loss, and those who read more over the summer make better gains in reading achievement. Providing more access to interesting reading material by investing in public libraries and librarians is an excellent way to deal with summer learning loss.

School during the summer means more common core, and less chance of pleasure reading happening. The common core discourages pleasure reading, because of its harsh set of standards, nonstop testing, and restriction to reading at or above "grade level," which for half of our students means a limitation to difficult reading (by definition, half of the students read below grade level, because grade level means the 50^th percentile). In addition, there is less funding than ever for school libraries, thanks the huge amount of money being spent on online testing.

Some sources:

Poverty and access to books: Neuman, S. and Celano, D. 2001. Access to print in low-income and middle-income communities. Reading Research Quarterly 36(1): 8-26.

Summer loss and poverty, more reading and gains:

Allington, R. and McGill-Franzen, Anne. 2012. Summer Reading: Closing the Rich/Poor Reading Achievement Gap. New York: Teachers College Press.

Heyns, Barbara. 1975.  Summer Learning and the Effect of School. New York: Academic Press.

Kim, Jimmy. 2003. Summer reading and the ethnic achievement gap, Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk 9, no. 2:169-188.

Shin, Fay. and Krashen, Stephen. 2007. Summer Reading: Program and Evidence. New York: Allyn and Bacon.

The common core and reading: Krashen, S. 2013. Access to books and time to read versus the common core standards and tests.  English Journal 103(2): 21-39. (available at www.sdkrashen.com).