The New Face of Summer School

Classrooms Fill Up With Students Trying to Get Ahead

In the back of a summer school chemistry class, teenagers Nichole Nguyen and Derek Cogar sat side by side, armed with periodic tables and calculators.

Cogar, 17, was at Prince William County's Forest Park High School because he failed the course during the school year. But Nguyen? She chose to be here -- while her friends slept in and went to the mall, and her family went on vacation -- because of her own hyper-ambitious volition. Her reason: She wants to be rid of the required chemistry class so she can take the Advanced Placement course this fall.

The stereotypical summer school -- where struggling, apathetic or otherwise attitudinally challenged students once ruled the hallways -- is changing. Overachievers are invading, enrolling in basic courses to free up their schedules for advanced courses during the regular academic year.

As a result, they are altering the once egalitarian dynamic of summer school, creating random moments of social awkwardness or even tension. Students retaking courses because they failed or got bad grades say summer school -- glorified in the 1980s cult classic "Summer School" -- was the one place they expected to feel equal. But now, that feeling is gone.

"If I didn't have summer school, I'd be asleep. But I want to make my résumé look better and raise my GPA," said Nguyen, 16. "But I tell people here that I'm just trying to have less classes next year. I want to be cool."

To Cogar -- who finished his chemistry class so he wouldn't have to take it along with a required physics course this fall -- the "other" students were not so deft at being "cool." He said he could easily detect who's who in the hierarchy.

"The people that are here because they want to overachieve, they'll talk about" being in summer school, he said. "But the people who failed try to keep it on the down-low."

This phenomenon is another example of how high schoolers are taking whatever steps necessary to get into their top college choice. Moreover, it shows that students, already grappling with a growing heap of summer homework, have a dwindling respite from class work.

Legions of achievers -- with their own reasons and agendas -- have been seeping into summer schools across the Washington area. In Prince William and Fairfax County, some students say they want to get rid of their hard classes now so they can take a light load of electives during their senior year, and others say they want to free up space for weighted college-level courses that could boost their grade point average. In Montgomery and Prince George's counties, some students say they are trying summer school so they can get a feel for a class before they take it again during the regular year. But many are just making sure they don't lose ground over the summer.

At John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, several summer school students gathered recently by the cafeteria and considered their respective statuses and, frankly, how awkward it can get with so many types of students.

"I just want to get a feel for precalculus and take it again next year so I know the material and what it's like," said Antony Mathias, who got a D in Algebra II last year and is a little nervous about this fall.

"I never heard of that before," said Janice Tran, a junior who failed precalculus. "I think at this age we should be going out. It's school, school, school -- all the time. It's going to drive you crazy."