Wednesday, July 9, 2003

Bloomfield makes summer school fun by Johnny Vines

In the mind of most kids, only one thing is worse than going to school - going to summer school.

All during the school year, students anxiously count down the days to summer, when they can sleep in, hang out with their friends, be lazy, and stay up late. Those who have to attend summer school, though, do not get to fully experience the satisfaction of summer. After all, they are still in school.

The Bloomfield R-XIV school district , however, may have found a way to make summer school an experience to be enjoyed and even looked forward to.

The Bloomfield schools have recruited the services of Newton Learning, a New York-based company that specializes in offering summer and after school educational curricula. Bloomfield is one of 68 Missouri school districts to have contracted with the company, and almost 60,000 Missouri students are presently enrolled in the courses. Newton incurs all expenses associated with the program, and school districts pay the company with existing state funds.

The program makes the experience of summer school more enjoyable, not only for the students, but also for the faculty involved. It is the responsibility of the local district and state to identify to Newton what skills it feels are the benchmarks for learning, and after the district hires its summer teachers and administrators, the rest is basically up to Newton.

“it’s a package deal,” said Dixie McCollum, Bloomfield summer school director. “The company sends a pre-made curriculum that comes with all the supplies and all the materials you’re going to need.”

So what exactly separates the Newton Learning program from any other summer school program? For one, attendance. Although some students are required to attend for academic reasons, the program is open to anyone in grades K through 12 who may be interested, and even students from other school districts are invited to participate if they wish to do so.

“Our average daily attendance this summer has ranged from 210 to 343 students, whereas our summer school program has done 200 to 210 students in the past,” McCollum said. “We’ve seen that much improvement, and that in itself is an indication of success.”

The daily routine of classes in the Newton Learning program is also a key difference from the typical summer school program.

“We have all the core curriculum classes in the morning, and in the afternoon we have activity learning classes, which are like soapbox derby, building rockets, digital photography, just all kinds of hands-on activities that help keep the students interested,” McCollum said.

Newton Learning has put a fresh new twist on summer school, and its techniques are paying off, not just in participation numbers, but also in effectiveness - or so say the statistics from last summer.

In the 2002 summer session, pre and post-curriculum test showed that Missouri students participating in the Newton program improved an average of 46.75% in communication arts (reading, writing, language arts) and 63.1% in mathematics. This level of success, combined with the popularity of the program among students and teachers alike, can all but assure that Bloomfield R-XIV and possible additional southeastern Missouri school districts will implement the Newton Learning program in the future.

“Funding is always an issue,” McCollum said. “But if everything works out, I’m 98 percent sure that we will use this program again. We’ve had a really good experience with it.”