After 30 Years of Reading the Research . . .

The Time magazine headline read, The Case Against Summer Vacation (August 2, 2010). After 30 years of following educational politics and reading the research, I already know the following:

1. The research findings and ideas argued in this story are not those of the hospitality/tourism industry.

2. Lobbyists from this industry will soon challenge the validity of the studies cited in the article.

3. If the “change summer vacation” idea still gets legs, the hospitality industry will commission new studies; and those studies will find (not surprisingly) that summer vacations have advantages that outweigh their disadvantages.

4. If the “change summer vacation” idea still gets legs, a public relations campaign will remind us of the joys of summer vacations.

5. Looking closer at the magazine cover, I see that the article sub-headline is: We romanticize it (summer vacation). But all that downtime is making our kids fall behind — especially those who can least afford to. Apparently the article discusses the effects of summer vacation on our lowest achieving students.

Hospitality Industry:

You have nothing to fear. Summer vacations are not endangered, no matter what the article says. State and local policymakers don’t care about low-achieving students, many of whom live in poverty. State funding formulas have long ensured that poor children get less-than-equal-educational opportunities; so why would those responsible for this inequity start caring about poor children now? (The only differences across states are differences of degree–how much less-than-equal are the opportunities provided to poor children in some states than in others.)

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