No more pencils, no more books...

Harris Cooper is chairman of the department of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

The long summer vacation disrupts the rhythm of instruction, leads to forgetting, and requires time be spent reviewing old material when students return to school in fall.

Also, [the research indicated that] the impact can differ based on a child's economic background.

Nancy Kalish is the co-author of "The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It."

Some studies claim that students lose skills they don't practice over the summer. However, if a child can't regain his grasp of fractions with a brief review, maybe those skills weren't taught well enough in the first place.

But there are a few things summer homework does accomplish effectively: It steals time away from other important aspects of learning such as play, which helps kids master social skills and teamwork. In addition, writing book reports means kids spend fewer hours being physically active, which is essential for good health and weight control, not to mention proper brain development.

Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and the author of "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future."

To the general question of whether or not schools should assign summer homework, the answer is, "Yes, most assuredly."

The reason stems not only from the brain drain of summer and the fog of texting that enwraps youths during leisure hours. It relates also to an attitude young people take toward education. In a word, they regard learning as a classroom thing, that's all.

Denise Pope is senior lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success, a research and student intervention project.

The problem with summer homework is a lack of buy-in from one of the main constituencies: the students.

Why should we care if the students are bought in? We know from research that motivation plays a central role in engagement with learning and, subsequently, student achievement.

Tyrone Howard is an associate professor at the U.C.L.A. Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

Homework should help to reinforce content or materials that teachers have taught or covered in class. But in many cases today, homework has been reduced to busy work that posseses minimal value in developing deeper understanding.

That said, assigning summer homework is a good idea in theory.

A better approach than homework over the summer is the more intensive, small learning community-type summer school programs that last four to six weeks.

Sarah Jane
...seems to me the best model would be to design summer learning experiences that reinforce concepts taught during the school year to avoid summer loss, but that also take advantage of unique summer environments and opportunities and give students a greater degree of choice and flexibility; which is motivating. Allow students to write book reports on books THEY choose from a recommended list, or have them keep a field journal of their outdoor explorations.

And, where available, why not take advantage of online tools to structure deadlines over the course of the entire summer so that students keep the learning going, rather than cramming it into the beginning or the end of the summer?