2013-05-23T10:12:13-04:00 Matthew Boulay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=matthew-boulay Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Matthew Boulay Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.984847 2011-09-28T14:47:01-04:00 2011-11-28T05:12:01-05:00

Matthew Boulay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-boulay/ This post was co-written by Bob Seidel, policy director at the National Summer Learning Association.

Lucy Friedman of The After-School Corporation and Jennifer Peck of Partnership for Children and Youth make excellent points in their Sept. 23 post, "Time for Congress to Stand up for Expanded Learning." We would like to expand on what they say.

The sentiment implied by the "Empowering Local Educational Decision Making Act," authorizing local communities to use federal funds in ways specifically adapted to local circumstances, is worthy. But we must go beyond sentiment to truly empower states and local communities to make the best informed use of resources, including federal funds.

The federal government provides only a small fraction of the public education funds spent by school districts across the country. But its influence far exceeds the dollars provided. For better or worse, the bipartisan No Child Left Behind initiative (NCLB), launched nearly a decade ago, has had a tremendous impact on state and local education policy. The current calls for more local autonomy are in large measure a response to NCLB.

The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) is a key opportunity for the federal government to provide valuable information to states and local communities on the latest research on the challenges that public education faces in the 21st century as well as on solutions that local communities might adapt to address their specific needs.

Congress should remember that it originally passed ESEA as part of its historic package of civil rights legislation in the 1960s. In that tradition, federal leadership on ongoing education reform is not only a necessity, but a responsibility. Calling attention to the best available research is part of that responsibility. Our students, families, and communities deserve no less.

For example, as Friedman and Peck pointed out, research shows clearly that before-school, after-school, and summer learning programs address critical academic and non-academic needs to support student success. This June, the RAND Corporation released a report, "Making Summer Count: How Summer Programs Can Boost Children's Learning," which summarizes the research on the tremendous impact that summer learning loss has on millions of students, primarily from lower-income families. The report also demonstrates the benefits of summer learning programs for these students and makes specific recommendations for implementation of high-quality programs.

The 21st Century Community Learning Centers program already supports such programs. The federal government should share the research with states and local communities and dedicate resources that they can use to apply that research. Congress and the Administration should make a clear statement that these programs address critical community needs and that the federal government is committed to supporting high-quality "expanded learning opportunities."

Dissolving the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program would send the opposite message and be a major step in the wrong direction (though some tweaking based on the latest research would probably be a good thing). Empowering local communities is essential. Knowledge is power; sharing it is one thing that the federal government can and should do to support local education decision-making.
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Matthew Boulay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-boulay/
The first was a front-page story in the New York Times that described high-powered summer activities as a college admissions strategy for ambitious young people. "A dizzying array of summer programs have cropped up to feed the growing anxiety that summer must be used constructively," the article says. Most of the programs described are clearly costly. For those without the means to participate, the Times mentions one scholarship program that serves 10 lucky students.

The second article came from the writer Mitch Albom in PARADE magazine, who decried the pressure families and kids are feeling in summer to add to their school-year achievements. "We sat on curbs. We daydreamed," Albom writes, recalling his own youth and arguing that "I can make the case for doing nothing all summer."

Both of these articles speak clearly to one kind of student -- the kind with a choice about whether to spend the summer downshifting or ramping up. But what of the estimated 15.5 million children in poverty, many of whom likely can't sit on the curb and daydream in summer because it isn't safe where they live? Who can't get a summer job, much less plan a fancy summer experience that will look great on a college application, because public funding for summer jobs programs for youth has been slashed?

For some of these young people, there will be nothing relaxing about a summer without the only caring adults in their lives -- their teachers. And they will return to the classroom several months behind their peers who had the opportunity and the encouragement to keep learning during summer. Over time, research from the Johns Hopkins University shows, this trend is likely to markedly contribute to many of the same children dropping out of high school.

The saddest thing about both of these articles is what they say about our collective attitude toward learning. Who says that learning can't be relaxing, fun, enjoyable and equally available to all? The fact that summer looms so large for many kids and adults as an inalienable right to absolute time off communicates something sad about the way we view intellectual growth. It also obscures a much more productive middle ground for this season -- to provide a different kind of education, in a different setting, than the school year does.

In the world of fitness, this middle ground is called "active recovery." Just when you're ready to give up on a workout class, the instructor changes the weight, the muscle worked, or the pace so that the workout feels different -- like a break, almost. It feels really good, but you don't stop moving. That "active recovery" keeps the calories burning and the heart rate up so that when you return to the more demanding part of the workout, it's a seamless transition. And by the end of the class, you have accomplished more than you thought you could.

We should ask the same of our children. We spend so much attention and money on the question of whether public schools serve low-income, minority children as well as their higher-income peers, only to do them a great disservice by willfully ignoring summer, when many of these kids simply stop in their tracks and regress.

Let's treat the brain as a muscle and work together to make summer the season of active recovery for all of our children. Let's provide low-income children with the opportunities that families with means already have by providing these kids with great summer programs at low or no cost. Let's make sure these summer programs for the students who need them most are of the highest quality, which means that kids will grow, flourish and, most importantly, have fun -- perhaps not even aware that during this "break," they're continuing to learn.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.880552 2011-06-21T11:52:23-04:00 2011-08-21T05:12:02-04:00

Matthew Boulay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-boulay/
Summer seems fleeting; think summer love and melting ice cream cones. But in fact, the learning losses it creates for children are permanent.

Summer seems frivolous, unimportant. But research shows summer slide is a major, cumulative contributor to the achievement gap in this country between low-income children and their middle-income peers.

Summer seems active, a time when kids would burn calories without even thinking about it. In fact, research shows children gain weight at a faster rate during the three months of summer than they do during the school year.

Summer school seems like a cruel oxymoron. But some school districts that have developed engaging, visionary summer programs have seen such encouraging results for students that they are maintaining and even expanding summer school in these tight budget times. New RAND Corporation research affirms summer programs can make a difference in disrupting the educational losses of summer.

Summer seems magical, and it is. But this leads to magical thinking about a season that many of us romanticize.

When the school doors close, the reality is that children with means and opportunity head off to enriching camps, interesting vacations, and hours of leisurely reading in a backyard hammock. Those children return to the classroom in the fall ready to move ahead in the next school year. Children without options stay inside without adequate supervision or nutrition, steadily forgetting what they have learned during the school year, because their parents still need to work but cannot afford or even find a safer place for them to spend the summer.

Programs, camps, and libraries across the country are trying to close these gaps and make summer a growing season for all kinds of children. The possibilities are as numerous as the pins on the National Summer Learning Association's Summer Learning Day map, which displays hundreds of events to celebrate summer learning from June to August. They're as big as a gathering of 200 middle-schoolers on the steps of the California State Capitol who will interview leaders about their summer experiences, and as simple as a camp show and tell in Tampa, Fla. They're as whimsical as a Western night in Omaha, Neb., featuring cowboy poetry and chuck wagon beans, and as serious as an anti-bullying summit in Cincinnati.

These events illustrate the most promising irony of summer: Summer setbacks have been with us for a very long time. But the solution is right in front of us, if we just reach out and seize it.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.838714 2011-03-21T17:38:44-04:00 2011-05-25T18:40:24-04:00

Matthew Boulay http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-boulay/
James, a private, grew up in a small town in western Pennsylvania and enlisted in the Marine Corps straight out of high school. He was assigned to an infantry unit and sent to northern Kuwait to take part in the invasion of Iraq. Feeling depressed and overwhelmed, he walked into a plastic porta-john at the edge of base camp, chambered a single round in his M16, and shot himself in the head. He was 19 years old.

I never met James and I didn't know him. But we served in the same battalion of light armored vehicles and I was thirty yards away from that porta-john. I remember hearing the shrill crack of a single rifle shot and I remember seeing his blood gush from beneath the door of the porta-john, forming a dark crimson pool in the Kuwaiti sand.

War is ugly and harsh and painful. War stories, especially the true ones, should remind us of the terrible toll that war inflicts on young men and women.

Today there are no monuments to James, no scholarships in his honor, no schools named after him. He died in Iraq but he didn't die in combat. We, as a nation, don't really know how to deal with the increasing numbers of veterans who struggle with the invisible wounds of war - post traumatic stress disorder, major depression, and traumatic brain injury.

The terrible reality, of course, is that war rages on for the veteran long after he or she has come home. The statistics are sobering. The military lost more troops to suicide in 2009 and 2010 than it has lost to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the country's largest Army base, Fort Hood in Texas, 22 soldiers committed suicide in 2010. And a recent study found that female veterans commit suicide at three times the rate of young women who have not served in the military.

These young men and women are not cowards. They served their country with honor and distinction. They and their families made enormous sacrifices. And the struggles faced by today's generation of young veterans are no different than the challenges faced by veterans of previous wars. Readers of the bestselling new book Unbroken, for example, will recognize the terrible symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder that Louis Zamperini struggled with after coming home from World War II. The Department of Veterans Affairs reports that more than 6,000 veterans commit suicide every year. That is an average of 18 veterans every day. The vast majority of these suicides are committed by older veterans who served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War.

I spent eight years in the Marine Corps Reserve and I served in Iraq 2003 as part of the initial invasion. I love the Corps and am proud to have served my country. But I am deeply troubled by the haunting feeling that most Americans have moved on. The wars are no longer an interest or a priority - even though our young men and women continue to fight them, continue to die, and continue to struggle with the transition to normal, civilian life when they come home.

I believe our country learned an important lesson from the war in Vietnam. Today nobody blames the soldier, nobody calls him names, nobody spits on him. But I fear that we have yet to learn the lesson of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: we cannot allow ourselves to lose interest in the soldier and the veteran even if we have lost interest in the war. We sent them to war and we have a sacred obligation to take care of them when they come home.

After James died, I remember that our platoon sergeant quickly gathered us together. "There are two ways we can talk about this," he said. "We can be hard-ass and we can say that suicide is selfish and cowardly and we can move on." He paused and looked each one of us in the eyes. "Or, we can deal with this. If any one of you is feeling that way, if any one of you is considering doing that, let me know and I will get you help."

It was an extraordinary moment of leadership. Like a good platoon sergeant, he was determined to take care of his Marines, whatever that meant.

Today our country needs to follow his example and take care of our veterans, whatever they need, whatever it takes.



Matthew Boulay served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve from 1997 to 2005. Today he leads a national education organization and lives in Salem, OR with his wife and two daughters.]]>