The Myth of the "Summer Slide"

I don't write these posts with any research or evidence outside my own observation and reasoning.  So what I'm about to argue is, as far as I know, unsupported by data.  However, there are many things unquantified in this world that shape our experiences in deep and profound ways. 

I'd like to expose a specious educational concept called the "summer slide."

The "summer slide" is a traditional phrase for the decline in reading and academic proficiencies of students as a result of not being in school during the summer months.  For example, a third grade student that scores a 90% on a reading exam in May might only score an 80% upon returning to school in September.  (To be transparent, I totally faked these numbers simply to illustrate the concept.)  This trend can happen to students in reading, spelling, math, geography and so on.

My personal experience supports this phenomena.  I don't know if the data does, and I'm not going to look into it. But I am willing to make a leap of faith and guess that if I were to look at the numbers, I'd see support for the widely accepted, common sense conclusion that if kids don't read for three months over the summer, they won't be as good at it as when they had been consistently reading during the school year.  I don't know, just seems to make sense.

So why do I call the concept specious? What's my beef with an obvious and accurate concept?

First, it narrows the scope through which we track learning.  Anyone who knows me knows my contempt for standardized tests.  Maybe contempt is too strong a word, because I understand they give us lots of information.  I just loath the elitism, greed, conformity, narrow mindedness, privilege, snobbishness, ranking and dehumanization associated with them.  I mean, are we talking about people or numbers? So maybe contempt isn't too strong. 

Second, the term "summer slide" suggests kids don't grow intellectually on their own.  In fact, it is a concept couched in negative assumptions about kids. It suggests kids are inherently unable to learn, adapt, transform and create knowledge without the guidance of systematic instruction.  It suggests that kids regress during the summer.  The measure of the kid is somehow degraded. 

But what about the depth of our students? What about the experiences they have that inform their world view and feed (or damage) their soul that aren't about reading, writing and arithmetic? I think of visits with grandparents, trips to the lake, an outing at an amusement park, and I think of background knowledge, values, and appreciation for nature.  I think of summer jobs, shooting stars, sleep away camps, and I think of relationship skills, work ethic and awe.  For most kids, these experiences lead to growth in areas that the traditional school environment doesn't necessarily support with the same enthusiasm or consistency as reading scores.  These typical summer experiences for many students are the opposite of regression, they are the blossoming and fruition of human growth.

But even this perspective lacks the depth of the concept of the "summer slide" because it paints too rosy of a picture. Not everyone has positive summer experiences.  

What about kids that spend the summer hungry, with an abusive family or ignored? What about the kids that find solace in drugs or gangs? The concept of the "summer slide" damages these kids most because it suggests that we approach them from the vantage of a test score instead of a vantage of empathy and compassion.  It seems absolutely the opposite of what a good human being should do.  

Here, the mythology of traditional education represented by concepts like the "summer slide" does more damage than good.  To focus on lifting the reading score of a child that spent the summer hungry is to not focus on lifting the child.  Don't get me wrong, reading is good and being proficient in language is one of the most powerful gifts we can give our students.  But the language we need to begin with is the language to understand, transform and share life.  

In this sense, acknowledging the  reality of the "summer slide" orients us in the wrong direction.  Our students are experiencing so many different things over a summer.  They are coming back to us ready to make sense of life, not just Algebra or The Scarlet Letter.  Can studying math and literature help? Absolutely. But start with the student as sharing in the human experience, not as a deficiency.