The New Face of Summer School
Classrooms Fill Up With Students Trying to Get Ahead

By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 7, 2006

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."

Mathias rolled his eyes and laughed, but not before Brandon Fong gave himself up: He's there to get ahead.

"I just want to be at the level of my friends. They've been getting straight A's," said Fong, a junior who is taking precalculus this summer so he can take AP calculus this fall. "I feel I have to match them."

Jervell Vanderhorst, who failed the course during the school year and sits next to Fong, was perplexed. "If you didn't have to come to summer school, why would you want to go?"

But for students who have to be there because of poor or failing grades, there can be tension.

Daniel McCrimmon, 18, a Prince George's student who has failed biology three times, said it makes him uncomfortable knowing that some students can spare the extra money to enroll in summer school when they don't have to be there. "It's like they don't take it as seriously, but they just enjoy it. My friend is rich and his parents send him here just for enrichment. So he blows it off day by day and then goes back to his private school."

And sometimes, it can be uncomfortable. In a summer chemistry class at Prince William, the teacher introduced a new topic and a student who was retaking the course made a comment about the material being easy.

"Someone taking the class for the first time said, 'Then, why did you fail?' It was like, awkward silence," said Ashton Gray, a junior hoping to enroll in International Baccalaureate chemistry class this fall. "Everybody who had failed just stared at the boy for saying that."

For years, affluent students have sought non-credit enrichment programs through colleges or private schools. But in the past five years, educators began seeing a large number of students seeking cheaper for-credit courses at public summer schools.

To address demand, D.C. public schools extended its Learning through Enriched and Accelerated Programs, which was an elementary and middle school curriculum, to include high school classes. Admission is granted through an application process, and students who want to retake a class they failed or got poor grades in are not eligible.

But in most major school districts in the Washington area, the students trying to get ahead are mixed in with those retaking classes. At the JFK summer school, precalculus teacher Candice Woodie said that three years ago her class was half its current size and filled with students who had failed or done poorly during the school year. "When I asked this year at the beginning of the session how many had not taken it before, half raised their hand," she said. "I was like, 'Wow.' "

Educators are split over whether the trend helps students or coaxes them into pre-adult stages of workaholicism.

Renée Lacey, supervisor of alternative and summer schools in Prince William, said that it makes sense for students to enroll over the summer, especially if they attend a magnet school where free periods are viewed as precious, and students can take a variety of courses tailored to their career interests.

Denise Pope, a lecturer at Stanford University School of Education, said students who choose to get ahead via summer school are buying into a seductive myth about what they think top colleges want.

"There are many colleges who would appreciate an ice cream worker and that you're kind of normal," she said. "It's also part of the college admissions craze. It's so difficult to get in that you have to do something like this with your summer to show that you're an uber student."

Some parents -- reared with a negative image of summer school -- have been supportive of their children's ambitions, even if it forces them to engage in a bit of public relations with other parents.

"Most of my friends are surprised. They'll say, 'Summer school. Really? Why did she have to do it?' " said Rosanne Arnold of Chantilly, whose daughter Rickie is taking geometry this summer in Fairfax. "You've got to clarify it."