Mandatory Summer Classes for Students Taking AP/Honors Classes

Most of the points brought up by the instigator are completely valid. However, I believe that the shortcomings of and problems with requiring honors and A.P. students to take summer classes heavily outweigh the benefits of such a course of action. My argument will focus on the financial issues related to funding such programs,the jeopardization of family vacations and summer plans, the lack of necessity of such programs because of the presence of prerequisite classes, and the lack of necessity of such programs for gifted students. First off, how are these programs going to be funded? Because of financial instability and economic problems, many public schools in this nation are already undergoing severe budget cuts. In the school I go to, for instance, we have had to fire several teachers, slash funding for the arts programs, and reduce janitorial services to the point where the condition of our bathrooms may very well be legally ambiguous (and it should be noted that, even though I go to one of the highest ranked magnet schools in the nation, these budget cuts still severely affect us). There is no possible way for every school in this country to add two (or three, depending on the state educational system) months of schooling -- the costs of paying teachers, administrators, and janitorial staff would be through the roof. U.S. public schools are barely able to pay their employees as it stands. Brain drain, according to every single source I have found, only really occurs if the students in question are not partaking in any creative and learning-related activities outside of school. Summer school would technically reduce this, but having to go to school has its flaws -- students generally are mentally exhausted by the end of the school year, and adding additional months of dull, repetitive common-core-based Honors/A.P. classes during the summer would be painful and arduous for students. Most A.P. classes already assign summer projects and assignments for students to learn the basics of the courses without having to go back to school, thus rendering the classes proposed by the instigator unnecessary. As a junior, next year I will be taking 4 A.P. classes and 3 honors classes. All four A.P. classes have given me quite challenging summer assignments, as well as readings to annotate and study. I am completely fine with this arrangement -- it allows me to stay in touch with the subjects that I will be studying each year, while allowing me to complete the assignments on my own time. But, like most students, I have other plans over the summer. I will be going to computer programming camps, and taking out-of-school classes in 3-d level creation and animation. In these camps and classes, I will learn as much as in school, but I will do so in a much less stressful manner, and I will learn material pertaining to different, more interesting subjects. I will be able to be creative and learn, while avoiding the restrictive pressures of the common core. I will undergo no "brain drain" because I allow myself to work on new and interesting projects that stimulate my mind. Nearly every honors student I know is enjoying a similar summer. Many are going to creative writing camps across the nation. Others are becoming interns at various research positions. A few are in Interlochen. Your mandatory classes would force them to ditch virtually every long-term summer plan that they have in order to be stuck in dull, boring, arduous common core classes taught by underpaid public school teachers. This is ludicrous, especially considering that many have considerable knowledge pertaining to the subject they are taking advanced classes in. I understand that many students do not participate in such activities during the summer. But most honors students do. The type of student who takes the initiative to join A.P. classes is not the type to spend the entire summer unproductively. In fact, in the first paragraph of one of the instigator"s sources, the author stated that educational summer programs were mainly useful for " low-achieving students who need additional time to master academic content," not high-achieving students taking honors and A.P. classes. Again, it should be noted that "brain drain," as it is called, is not caused distinctly by lack of being in school. It is caused by lack of creative activity and mental exercise. Going to computer programming camp and writing one"s own computer programs for the entire summer is just as (if not more) rewarding than being stuck in a classroom because it exercises one"s mind and causes one to find new, more intricate and innovative solutions to normal problems. The same can be said for composing music, designing a model rocket, making three-dimensional models to print, or doing any other genuinely interesting and mentally challenging activity. Regardless of what activity is being performed, going to school during the summer is just one incredibly expensive and stressful option for reducing "brain drain." In fact, most sources I have found specifically advise not going to summer classes due to the stress that attending them can create, and instead just recommend reading, debating, talking, and participating in normal daily activities that require some form of intelligence and logic. As can be inferred from the previous paragraphs, many students will find these summer classes boring and uninformative. Many sign up for A.P. classes after taking honors classes pertaining to the subject in question -- as such, they already have considerable knowledge and skill pertaining to said subject. Many sign up for A.P. classes after taking summer out-of-school courses in the subject. Most students I know sign up for these classes in order to enrich their currently existing knowledge of the subject. And many (I would say most, but I cannot find any sources to confirm it) school systems have systems of prerequisite classes in place (along with placement tests, in the event that students want to skip prerequisite classes and go straight into A.P. courses) to ensure that students without sufficient prior knowledge of the subject are not placed into excessively rigorous courses. On another level, entering the grades from these courses will be almost as problematic as funding the courses themselves. By making mandatory summer classes, you will, effectively, be creating another school semester. As such, the students mainly taking regular classes will have two semesters worth of grades, while the students mainly taking honors and A.P. classes will have three. Given that the students taking A.P. and Honors courses did much more work over the course of the school year and the summer, are they going to get a semester"s worth more high school credit? Are the grades from their summer courses going to be pass or fail, or are they going to be letter grades? The educational system will become more unfair and inefficient if this course of action is pursued, no matter which decision regarding the scoring of the classes is made. If the summer classes are thought of as, say, " of a class, then the honors students get 1.5 times as much credit and graduate incredibly quickly. They emerge from high school completely unprepared for college because the value of their classes were completely blown out of proportion. If the number of credits needed for college are raised, the normal students take a lot longer to graduate. On the other hand, not counting two months of classwork and the forfeiture of the students" summer break for any sort of high school class credit would be ludicrous. Either outcome produces an unsatisfactory result. There is no good solution. Rather than decide between two equally horrible options, we just need to scrap the entire program and let students enjoy their summers. Hopefully, the voters deciding on this topic will realize that mandatory summer classes for all students taking Honors/A.P. classes is absolutely ridiculous. It is either unnecessary or unfeasible on every level -- it is logistically problematic for families, unnecessary for the vast majority of honors students, and financially impossible. Honors students should not be forced to take summer classes. Thank you. I look forward to the rest of the debate. I hope my argument was not too hard to follow. Honestly, most of the stuff here was completely made of common sense, but I have a bunch of relevant sources below. Sources: http://www.wallacefoundation.org... https://www.oxfordlearning.com... https://familyopolis.com... https://professionals.collegeboard.org...