COLUMN: The school year should be all year long

"You forgot 13, dude,' I told my son.
"Oh. OK, 12, 13, 14, 16-' he said, counting his seashells.
"And 15. You forgot 15.'
Now granted, he's only 4 years old, so I'll cut him some slack, but I'm pretty sure, back in June, when he was still in the daily grind of his pre-K schedule, he wasn't forgetting numbers like an oft-sacked quarterback. He used to know 13 came after 12. I'm confident he'll regain this skill - after all, it's not a terribly difficult one to master - but still: What happened?
Well, what happened, I'm guessing, is summer vacation. The kid went soft. And apparently, he's not alone. On average, kids lose two months of math skills in the summer, according to Duke University professor Harris Cooper. And thus explains my child's sudden aversion to odd numbers after 11.
But, in some respects, my kid was lucky. He had a great summer. He went to camp thanks to his grandparents, and so was otherwise enriched. But kids who aren't as fortunate? According to Cooper's research, kids who come from less lose more skills (math and everything else) in the summer than middle and upper class kids.
And of course, let's not forget our children aren't exactly lighting the world on fire in the education department as it is. According to a recent Harvard University's Program on Education Policy and Governance study, gains American students have made over the last two decades are "middling' compared to other countries, and the same study quotes other research placing American students academic skills somewhere between - and I'm paraphrasing here - "sucky' and "sucky times infinity.'
All this adds up to something so simple and so obvious, it's almost hard to believe it hasn't happened: Buh-bye, summer vacation.
Now I'm not an ogre; in fact, I'm fine with taking August off, more or less. (Homework, but no school.) And while we're at it, let's extend Thanksgiving to a full week off, two weeks around Christmas and New Year's, throw in a July 4 week and another week or two here or there. And then ... a year-round, 220-day school year.
But it just makes sense. It really does. There's no logical reason to have our kids learning for nine months and then take three months off. Nothing else in our society mirrors that.
Many other countries operate like this, like Germany and Japan, and ... well, and why not? Again, I'm not advocating we completely do away with summer vacation, just shorten it to August, fill in the rest of the calendar with well-timed breaks, and up the number of days of education. How is this bad?
By the way, this little plan (that will never happen) would also have an impact on a long-held belief of mine, namely that August is a piece of crud month and we should cancel it. And by limiting the summer break for kids to August, it would help move this idea along. Basically, everyone would take off because that's when their kids are off. It would be beautiful. We'd be like France, where August is treated like a cold cocktail to be savored, not a miserable month to be endured.
And yeah, as I parenthetically noted up there, this idea of a year-round schooling system isn't going to happen. It would help the kids, it would help the nation, it would help our future, but nobody would have the political will to try and implement it.
So welcome back to school, kids. Sorry you forgot how to count to 20.
Jeff Edelstein can be reached at, and @jeffedelstein on Twitter