text: Student-designed summer projects claim to be beneficial as they allow students freedom in choosing the topics students study and the type of work they prefer to do, allowing them to be more invested in their work as well as boosting productivity and creativity. This feature, however, proves to be more harmful to a student than helpful as it reults in students starting the year with vastly different levels of understanding. When students enter the year at different levels of understanding, the teacher has to spend a considerable amount of time at the beginning of the year making sure their students are caught up to the same place, wasting both the teacher's time as well as the time of students who are more prepared. This is avoided with teacher-designed summer assignments, as teachers will provide the same topic and type of work, allowing the students to enter the year at the same level of preparedness.