What’s Really Behind Student Fade-Out: Summer or Schools?
By Vicki Alger • Friday July 20, 2012 11:15 AM PDT • 7 Comments
Children get dumber over the summer, says Peter Orszag, vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup Inc. and a former director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama administration.
He points to several research studies documenting fade-out among students when they’re away from the classroom during the summer months. But school children’s brains absorb new knowledge like sponges, so it’s worth considering why they can’t seem to recall basics they supposedly learned just a couple of months ago.
One explanation is that the time they do spend in school is not challenging enough. Surveys over the past several years have documented that students are bored silly.
Orszag’s preferred solution to summer fade-out is more time in school. Yet the evidence indicates quality school time trumps quantity seat time. Just look at our global competitors.
When it comes to time in school, top global performers prepare students in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost compared to the United States. Among the 32 countries participating in the 2006 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessment, the United States had the most teaching hours per public school year, 1,080 compared to the international average of 803. Top international performers had far fewer teaching hours. Finland had 600 teaching hours, while the Republic of Korea had roughly 575 hours. Meanwhile, with 505 teaching hours per school year, Japan had the least teaching hours of all OECD assessment countries.
Those countries also spent significantly less than the U.S. but achieved superior results. U.S. cumulative spending per student between the ages of six to 15 was $80,000 and the average math scale score was about 475 out of a possible 1,000. Only Switzerland spent as much, but its students performed nearly 100 scale score points higher. Korea’s cumulative spending per student spending between the ages of six to 15 was around $40,000; Finland’s, around $50,000; and Japan’s was under $60,000. Still, students in each of those countries outperformed their American peers by 100 scale-score points or more. (See Chart B7.2)
This lack of productivity hurts students and our economy. Rather than fret over children’s summer fade-out, policy makers should be focusing instead on the apparent public schooling system’s fade-out.
Tags: Economics, Education, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics 
Government at all levels is thoroughly corrupt and incompetent. It destroys and distorts everything it touches. What it doesn’t kill, it bankrupts: Social Security, Medicare, AMTRAK, Fannie and Freddie, the Post Office...
Why would any sane human being place his child’s education in the hands of an organization with such a pathetic track record and then be surprised when his child graduates as a functional illiterate?
Steve H. | Jul 20, 2012 | Reply
Do You hear this, all you “educators” and wanna-be tyrants: “When it comes to time in school, top global performers prepare students in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost compared to the United States.”
This one sentence above says it all!!! Americans are stupid chumps to fall into this “spend more money on education” BFS.
I think I’ll start referring to the unitedstate as, Chump Nation,... things make way more sense that way. Totally.
clark | Jul 21, 2012 | Reply
Here in the UK I’m always pleased to hear (shock horror to the newscasters) that so many schools have had to close for the day because of snow. That means that the kids will have a day of exercise, learning about snow and how to slide, how to fall over, how quickly young bodies recover from cuts and bruises and how interacting with their contemporaries in an unfamiliar situation requires social skills if you are not to get half a pound of snow down the back of your neck.
Had they gone to school they wouldn’t have been allowed out in the playground (they might slip over!)and would have spent the day not learning, but staring through the windows wishing they were outside on a toboggan.
The Education Industry spends a lot of time and effort trying to persuade us that school and education are synonymous terms and that learning can ONLY take place in school. This, of course, is nonsense. Most learning is done in the world of hard knocks outside the school ‘safety zone’. That’s one reason why I argue that young people should leave the institution of school at age 14 and start personal education.
(See wotnoschool.com)
John Harrison | Jul 24, 2012 | Reply
Summers are for learning outside the classroom.
If we remove one demographic group from our average test scores and then compare with other countries like Japan, Korea, Finland, etc., and others who don’t have that group, we are #1 in all categories.
The public schools worked very well for me. Teachers were tough and everybody had a father and mother, though I think the school year should be expanded (heck it seems like there’s a lot more to learn now than 40 yrs ago!), but we need to bypass the liberal teachers and their expensive unions. Perhaps 75% of the class time should be online without liberal, union teachers.
We need higher standards and more tests and more accountability.
We know the problem with public education is twofold: liberals and unions, not summer breaks. Yes quality over quantity, but we know the source of the real problem.
Paul Hoffmann | Jul 24, 2012 | Reply
The inclusion of the Asian countries (Korea, Japan) is a false comparison.
Their public schools teach less, but many of their students are also enrolled in private afterschool arrangements of various kinds for the purpose of preparation for highschool and college entrance exams and other such pursuits.
To do a fair comparison there you’d have to include those hours/cost also. You’d have to do the same for the US also, but I can almost guarantee you we do significantly less than they do.
I cannot speak for the European countries in this analysis however.
Slim934 | Jul 25, 2012 | Reply
Our country’s education can be viewed as lacking because of how our academic scores compare to those of differing countries. The quality of education that students receive is more important than the number of hours spent in the classroom. However, even though during the summer students are not attending classes, it doesn’t mean they aren’t absorbing knowledge. Many jobs are based on common sense and working well with others, which is something that can’t be taught, but learned only through experience. Learning takes place all around us, both inside and outside the classroom. Some of the most important lessons we learn are through the interaction of people and being independent from others. We can be book smart and/or street smart, neither is better than the other, but we, as a country, are judged on how book smart we are.
Lauren H. | Aug 12, 2012 | Reply