I think the following article a few weeks ago in the Toronto Star touch on an important part of a child's education, the one that starts at home. Going back to the original question about school districts, based on the thoughts reiterated in the article, one would deduce that the "higher performing" schools or the more desireable school districts are essentially in the neighborhoods where the parents are more involved in their children's growth and development. The writer states that children in more affluent, educated households improve at a pace faster than in lower-income households. Relating back to real estate, I think it's safe to say that the notion of a "good school district" is probably less attirbuted to the school itself and more with who your neighbors are.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/education/article/1231204--summer-widens-rich-poor-learning-gap
Summer widens rich/poor learning gap
Published on Wednesday July 25, 2012
Louise Brown
Education Reporter
Children in rich, educated families tend to become better readers over the summer — improving at almost the same pace as if they were in school — largely because they have more time with their highly literate parents, new research shows.
But students in less affluent, less educated families can lose almost a month’s worth of reading skill, widening the learning gap between rich and poor while school is closed for the summer.
McMaster University sociology professor Scott Davies, who is leading the landmark study funded by Ontario’s Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat, said the findings underscore the need for intense reading help for high-need students in summer and maybe eventually on weekends and after school, “to take a bite out of that learning gap.â€
The study is the largest ever done in Canada into the “summer setback†in literacy experienced by students in low-income families. While continuing this summer in nearly 40 school boards across the province, pilot programs over the past two years have already shown that children of wealthy, university-educated parents tend to read about five months ahead of their poorest classmates by the end of June each year, and the gap stretches even wider in summer when children are immersed in their diverse family backgrounds without school to level the playing field.
A child who is reading four to five months behind his richer classmates in Grade 1 can fall more than a whole year behind by Grade 3, the study showed. U.S. studies have found summer learning gaps can be early warnings for poor high school marks and even dropping out.
While children whose parents didn’t go past high school generally saw their literacy skills slip by a month (the amount of skill typically gained in a month at school), parents with bachelor’s degrees saw their children’s reading skill actually rise by a month; those with master’s degrees, PhDs and professional degrees — doctors, lawyers and so on — saw their children’s reading skill go up by two months, even though school was closed.
“It’s like French immersion, but I call it socio-economic immersion — there’s nothing like having two months with highly literate parents modeling vocabulary, exposing you to reading; it’s like having your own private tutor or being in summer school at home,†said Davies, who holds the Ontario Research Chair in Educational Achievement and At-Risk Students.
While the benefits of educational camps, family trips, extra books, newspapers and computers account for about 25 per cent of the so-called “summer surge†experienced by children in more affluent families, those things aren’t the key, Davies warned.
“It’s also the daily conversations that are sophisticated and expand children’s vocabularies, and being read to regularly by seasoned readers, one-on-one,†he said in his latest report, to be published in Canadian Public Policy. “This informal role-modeling is available to affluent children seven days per week. Less advantaged children, in contrast, have less constant exposure to those quality resources.â€
But the research project also sponsored about 60 summer literacy camps across 30 school boards over the past two years, targeted at low-income, struggling readers, to see if they make a difference. And they do, Davies said.
The day camps were run for 1,073 children in Grades 1 to 3 from lower-income neighborhoods who were reading below grade level.
Children who participated in the two- to three-week programs improved their reading skill by about 1.5 months over the summer, compared with peers who did not attend.
Meagan Matheson goes to Brian W. Fleming Public School in Mississauga, which ran one of Davies’ literacy day camps this month. It was designed to help students at the school, many of whom are refugees or live in a shelter, boost their reading skills while learning about the fun of Canadian camping.
“Every day, we’d go with our reading teacher for a while to read a book, and sometimes you make a mistake, but then you can learn,†said Meagan, who is entering Grade 4.
Principal Christine Parr said the free program gave struggling readers nearly an hour of small-group reading help every morning, as well as field trips to a beach and ice cream parlor, activities they might not have had the chance to enjoy with their families.
“Background knowledge is what helps us understand stories we read, but if your background knowledge is different than what comes up on Ontario tests or curriculum, you won’t understand,†Parr noted.
“One student from Afghanistan asked me if t splash pad at the park was the lake,†she said, “so I turned her around and showed her what a real lake looks like.â€
