Pick a school district, ask them about summer school, and whether it is a student, a teacher, a parent, a superintendent, you are certain to see some version of a grimace.
Summer school has a purpose. Our young students suffer summer learning loss. Students already at a deficit miss an opportunity to advance over the summer. Families need a way to maintain some structure to long summer days. But traditional summer school doesn’t work. Attendance is rotten, even if you get kids signed up in the first place. Test scores don’t rise. And, if anything, attitudes toward school deteriorate rather than improve.
That is why the Power Scholars Academy, now wrapping up its second summer, is such a gratifying experiment. An audacious combined effort of the public elementary schools in Forest Park and River Forest, intensively backed by the West Cook YMCA and working from a template of the Building Educated Leaders for Life curriculum organization, Power Scholars saw 84 youngsters complete the program last week.
Enrollment was up. Daily attendance was up. And in a month or so the measures of social and academic progress will be reported by each district.
But assess results based on the comments of Supt. Ed Condon from River Forest and Lou Cavallo from Forest Park and the results are already known. “I think it has taken what each of the member organizations could do individually and elevated it to a much higher level,” said Condon.
Starting with a daily pledge, our young scholars powered through classwork and into art projects, music, cake decorating and all manner of field trips. Finally, summer school that beats sitting home doing nothing!
