When Scott Landry flunked a math class in his Townsend,
Mass., high school this year, he was told he wouldn’t make it into the 10th grade
unless he went to summer school.
So how was the 14-year-old starting his third week of a
summer algebra class?
“I’m going skateboarding and hanging out with my
friends,” he said. Of course, he wouldn’t get around to those tasks until
he rolled out of bed around 11 a.m. Algebra would wait until about 8 p.m., when
he was done playing and ready to log on to his computer.
With a growing number of schools letting students like Scott
take classes and make up credits online, summer school’s punitive reputation is
slipping. Many teens are finding less of a need to spend their summers cooped
up in a classroom missing out on camp, vacations and jobs.
“You have all day to do one assignment,” Scott
said. “And if you’re really busy one day, you can work on stuff the next
day.”
Submitting their assignments in e-mails, “talking”
to teachers through instant messaging and interacting with other students in
online discussion groups lets them learn at their own pace. They do the work
when they find time for it, and some students and their parents say the system
is making learning easier.
