Lucky kids not punished with summer vacation

Cory Doctorow reports that a bureaucratic screw-up has cost students their summer vacation in one California school district:

A bureaucratic boondoggle in the western San Bernardino County, California school district will cost the students their summer breaks -- the schools inadvertently introduced a school-time shortfall amounting to two school days' worth of instruction time over the entire school year. Due to a quirk of regulation, they have to keep the schools in session for an extra thirty four days or lose $7 million in funding.

Of course, they may be the lucky ones. According to Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, elementary students, at least from low-income households, might be better off in school over the summer than on vacation.

For American students from wealthy homes, summer vacation isn’t a problem; but, citing the research of a Johns Hopkins sociologist, Gladwell shows that it’s a profound handicap for students from poor homes, who actually outlearn their rich counterparts during the school year but then fall behind them when school lets out. “For its poorest students, America doesn’t have a school problem,” Gladwell concludes. “It has a summer-vacation problem.” So how to close the gap between rich and poor students? Get rid of summer vacation in inner-city schools.

Still, you'd like a year-round school calendar to be a choice made by the school district, and not the result of heavy-handed state mandates and local bungling.

Hattip: Instapundit