Via Yglesias, Lane Kenworthy makes a good point - summer vacation increases educational inequality. The reason is that during summer, kids are exclusively in their parents' hands for an extended period of time. During that interval, rich and well-educated parents are sending their kids to summer-school, enrichment camps, etc., in addition to reading to them, teaching them things, etc., not to mention keeping them in a safe environment. Poor or uneducated parents...well, who knows what they're doing with their kids, but it can't be as valuable.
Conservatives might respond: Tough. If parents are bad parents who don't pay enough attention to their kids, don't stay married so that there's two parents in the house, and don't provide for their kids' futures, it's their fault that the kids do badly. Shape up, parents. Get some personal responsibility.
Which would be a pretty silly response. Making a kid suffer for his parents' mistakes, long before he has the power to improve his situation, goes against traditional American values, like equality of opportunity. As I see it, the idea that who your parents were shouldn't determine your destiny is the main reason we have public education in the first place. Summer vacation isn't as blatant as racial discrimination, but it has some of the same effects. It needs to go.
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