New research shows that disparities between lower- and higher-income students’ tests scores increase significantly over summer vacations.

Those conclusions were gathered from a study tracking 790 Baltimore public school children from first grade through the age of 22.

The April 2007 American Sociological Review presents this new Johns Hopkins University research effort that offers insights into why low-income children lag behind more privileged classmates in high school graduation rates and college attendance.

In “Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap,” Johns Hopkins University sociologists Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle and Linda Steffel Olson document evidence that future academic success can be explained, to a significant degree, by experiences during summer vacations in the elementary school years.

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“The good news is that disadvantaged kids’ test scores improve at pretty comparable rates during the school year,” Alexander said. “They’re pretty close and they’re keeping up while they’re in school. But over the summer they fall behind.”

Alexander said a more enriching family environment over the school break — if newspapers and magazines are around the house, if the parents are college-educated, if children are taken to the library and museums, if they’re in organized sports, for example — makes a quantifiable difference in academic achievement.

The achievement gap accumulates over the years and results in unequal placements in college preparatory tracks, starting in ninth grade. The gap also increases the chances that children from low socioeconomic families will drop out of high school and decreases their chances of attending a four-year college.

“This study lines up with a similar national study I did in 1998,” said Doug Downey, an Ohio State University sociologist. “The most important part of this work, I believe, is the imprint by Baltimore researchers that measure the first year kids begin to learn in school — the success rate of that learning —and the link to the achievement gap to the time they’re not in school. It may change the definition of what we consider a failing school.”

“We have to help them have experiences over the summer months that build academic skills, such as high-quality summer school programs, or begin to consider breaking up the school year or having year-round schooling,” Alexander said.

rcassie@baltimoreexaminer.com