4 Things to Know About Summer Learning Loss

For many American children, summer brings outdoor adventures, camp activities, and enriching family vacations. When these kids head back to school in the fall, they’ll be ready to forge ahead into the next grade level.

But for children from low-income families, summer can be a season of loss. Kids lose the supervision, stimulation, and educational opportunities schools provide during the academic year, and parents can’t afford to fill in the gaps.

These children slide backward academically, and start school behind their more affluent peers.

Summer learning loss is a nationwide problem that’s capturing the attention and concern of educators, parents, researchers, and policymakers alike.

Here are four things to keep in mind about summer’s infamous slide:

1. THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM: On June 13 the RAND Corporation released the first comprehensive evaluation of past studies on summer learning loss and summer program effectiveness for K-8 students.

The report found that summer learning decay equates on average to about one month of instruction. While some kids experience no loss and even achieve gains, low-income students display disproportionate losses that accumulate over time—especially in reading. This cumulative effect accounts for a substantial portion of the achievement gap between low-income and high-income students.

The authors contend that school-based reform efforts to close the achievement gap may be unsuccessful if the summer slide is not addressed.

2. POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: There is a proven antidote to seasonal learning loss: high-quality summer programs. Whether they are voluntary or mandatory, these services interrupt the summer slide and even reverse it by producing academic gains.

According to the RAND report, effective summer programs have several features in common: they encourage regular attendance, maintain small class sizes, provide individualized instruction, involve parents, and offer a combination of academic and enrichment activities.

Longitudinal studies demonstrate that positive effects of summer learning activities last well beyond the fall semester, and endure for at least two years.

3. COST CONTAINMENT: The biggest obstacle to providing all children in need with high-quality summer programs is financial. With average costs ranging from $1,109 to $2,801 per child, many cash-strapped districts can no longer stretch their education budgets to cover summer learning.

For example, D.C. cut about $17 million from summer schools, youth-employment programs, and enrichment camps this year, leaving 15,000 students stranded.

But other cities are creatively curtailing budget crunches and finding alternative sources of funding for summer enrichment. New Orleans is tapping into local organizations and private donors to increase enrollment in summer programs from last year’s 700 to 5,000. Boston and Wilmington, Delaware, are funneling federal Race to the Top funds into summer services and youth-employment programs.

4. HOPEFUL SIGNS: Making summer learning available to children in high-need communities is the mission of the National Summer Learning Association (NSLA). They head a coalition of 45 organizations dedicated to including summer learning in federal education policy.

To kick off National Summer Learning Day on June 21, the NSLA website features a map highlighting hundreds of events taking place nationwide.

The Walmart Foundation recently donated $11.5 million to NSLA—a landmark grant that will provide 20,000 middle schoolers with high-quality summer learning opportunities for the next three years. The donation is part of Walmart’s $25 million Summer Giving Campaign aimed at filling in gaps created when schools close for the summer.

Photo: stevendepolo/Creative Commons via Flickr.