Maryland’s Comptroller, Peter Franchot, is on a mission to make summer longer, and he gained a high-profile supporter at Wednesday’s Board of Public Works meeting. Franchot’s been pushing a petition to move the start of the school year to after Labor Day, and Gov. Martin O’Malley signed the petition at the meeting.
Franchot says the move would generate tens of millions of dollars for small businesses by extending the summer tourist season, and give families more time to spend together.
“I particularly like that this important reform can be done with no cost to the tax payers,” he told attendees at the crowded meeting.
O’Malley agreed. “In fact I’m tempted to do an executive order extending summer by another month,” he joked.
Franchot's plan would shorten the school year while maintaining the state-mandated 180 instruction days. That would be achieved by reducing teacher training days or possibly shortening other breaks.
But Adam Mendelson, a spokesperson for the Maryland State Education Association, says education policy should be driven by educators. He says reducing teacher training, particularly when teachers are struggling to adapt to the new Common Core standards, would hurt students, particularly students with special needs, English-language learners and students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
Mendelson also pointed to research that shows that long summer holidays leave poor kids behind because they lack access to the kind of enrichment and learning opportunities their wealthier peers take part in over the summer break.
“They’re just losing skills. They’re losing math skills, they’re losing reading skills, so when they come back to school they essentially need to relearn and get back up to speed on those skills so they can take their learning to a higher level.”
Mendelson pointed out that the kids who are most likely to suffer summer ‘brain drain’ are the ones least likely to come from families who could afford to go on summer vacations.
The Board of Public Works also green-lit nearly $60 million to pay the Iowa-based education company NCS Pearson Inc. to develop and administer new Common Core-aligned standardized tests for the next four years.
A fierce debate led up to the two-to-one vote to approve the spending. Franchot, who offered an “emphatic no” vote on the spending, raised concerns that the procurement process was not competitive enough since only one company, Pearson, bid on the contract.
Maryland State Department of Education Superintendent Lillian Lowry argued that the process was competitive and that the tests would be cost less per-student to administer than the previously offered Maryland State Assessments.
