didn t surprise me, but the statistics shocked me, frankly. let me read them. by sixth grade, low-income students fell three grades behind. by ninth grade, two-thirds of learning gap between income groups. what does this tell us about what we need to do in terms of our educational system? it tells us two things. one is that what is going on during the school year may not be quite as bad as we re always hearing. it also tells us where we can focus a lot of effort at reasonably low costs. because summer doesn t, the best summer programs, summer enrichment programs that i saw is i went across the country looking at them. they weren t expensive programs, they weren t highly bureaucr bureaucratic. in many cases they were run by volunteer groups, church groups that with a little bit of support were able to really offer the enrichment that these students need in a way that s fun and that s outdoors and
city in early june. i agree. there you go. i think the idea of a summer vacation where kids play ball with each other and they go to parks and do things like that, fine they can do some summer reading but i think it s a healthy thing, frankly. the problem you pointed out low income areas there isn t reading during the summer and where the summer slide is. we know that high income families, they do fantastic things during the summer. you get sent here. i took my kids to south africa to the world cup. that s a fantastic learning experience but how many people can do that? low income students, they are observe looking after siblings and not summer camp. public schools are closed and not a lot of facilities that folks can go to. that is the problem. and the problem is that it increases this learning gap between high income and low income students and it just compounds summer after summer. but i don t think by sending kids to school 11 months out of the year, you re going to