PENDLETON — Emily Wright is one of the hundreds of area high school students opting for early morning classes instead of late summer mornings in bed.

The senior at Pendleton Heights High School has been arriving at the school by 7:30 a.m. for an economics class she’d rather not take in the fall.

“It seems like it’s getting better now,” said Wright, 17, “but at first it was hard to get going.”

Clearing up room in a student’s schedule is popular motivation to take summer classes, school officials said, but remediation is also important, especially in lower grades where the standardized ISTEP test judges students’ and schools’ progress.

Because of low student participation, Anderson Community Schools is offering high school students fewer courses this summer, like biology and some English courses. The state reimburses districts for only a portion of teachers’ supplemental summer pay, so classes that had fewer than 15 students register had to be canceled.

And to keep costs low, the district didn’t waiver from the 15 students per class rule, so whereas a class with nine students might have been fine in past summers, no classes of that size are happening this summer, said Nancy Farley, the summer school coordinator for Anderson schools.

Still, Farley said, between 250 and 300 of the nearly 3,000 high school students in the district are taking classes this summer.

For lower grades, summer school is targeted to students who could use help boosting ISTEP scores.

More than 200 Anderson middle school students who did not pass a section of the standardized test and also failed math or English last fall participated in a 13-day summer program, Farley said.

A similar number of first- and second-graders reading below their grade level are signed up for a district-wide summer program at East Side Elementary. The district provides buses to those classes, which begin July 14.

Bill Bolander, assistant superintendent for South Madison schools, said participation in the high school summer program has remained steady, but summer classes for lower grades are becoming more popular, and his district has expanded summer offerings for elementary students in recent years.

More than 50 incoming kindergartners who the district identified with pre-enrollment testing as possibly being at risk of struggling with socialization and academic basics will be at an 8-day camp shortly before school begins.

For higher grades, ISTEP scores can indicate that students could benefit from summer school, Bolander said, and summer school can help boost future success on tests and overall school work.

“We see a drop off between the spring and the fall in students’ performance, because a lot of students go home and just don’t do anything over the summer,” he said. “The idea is to keep them moving along that path. Summer school helps ISTEP, but it’s also more important to have them at the right level when they start the school year.”

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