Summer vacation is a kid's favorite time of year.
It depends on where they live, say two Johns Hopkins University researchers. The students, who are now about 20, come from different socio-economic backgrounds and were enrolled in about 20 schools around Baltimore City. Rather than studying changes in test scores from one grade to the next, Alexander and Entwisle compared changes in test scores during the school months to changes that occur in the summer months. Gains or losses during the school months can be primarily looked at as the school's contribution to achievement while gains or losses that occur over the summer months are more likely the contributions of the family, economic and neighborhood circumstances. What Alexander and Entwisle learned was that children in Baltimore's poor neighborhoods were learning at the same rate as middle-class students during the school year but fell much further behind during the summer.