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The Hechinger Report - Proof Points: Summer learning evidence
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By Jill Barshay

Summer school is on many policymakers’ minds as a way to mitigate the months of learning lost during coronavirus school closures. I was curious to learn how many schools are planning summer programs in 2020 and how effective summer school was even before the pandemic hit. Spoiler alert: not very.
 
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Key Findings 
  • Roughly speaking, slightly more than half of U.S. districts are planning to offer summer school for elementary and middle school students in 2020, according to a survey of 100 U.S. school districts. (Summer school is more prevalent for high schools students to retake failed classes.) For the schools that are holding summer school, instruction in most cases will be exclusively virtual -- over the internet.
  • In the largest study of summer school, conducted by RAND, a nonprofit research organization, students who participated didn’t perform better academically or by social-emotional measures than those who didn’t.
  • Low attendance was a problem in all five cities in the experiment. Many kids never showed up. Those who did only attended 75 percent of the time. Only half the students returned for a second summer.
  • Students who faithfully attended five-to-six-week long summer programs with small class sizes and certified teachers, including teachers who specialize in teaching children with disabilities, showed sustained learning gains in math and reading.
Parent Takeaway 
  • Harvard reading expert James Kim’s advice to families: download free digital books, read aloud to your child (even to children as old as 13) and discuss books together.
Lit Review 
  1. Augustine, Catherine H., Jennifer Sloan McCombs, John F. Pane, Heather L. Schwartz, Jonathan Schweig, Andrew McEachin, and Kyle Siler-Evans, Learning from Summer: Effects of Voluntary Summer Learning Programs on Low-Income Urban Youth. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016.
  2. Kim JS, Quinn DM. The effects of summer reading on low-income children’s literacy achievement from kindergarten to grade 8: A meta-analysis of classroom and home interventions. Review of Educational Research [Internet]. 2013;83 (3) :386-431. 
  3. Bree Dusseault, Sean Gill, Lisa Chu, Districts Are Missing an Opportunity to Innovate as Most Take Traditional Approaches to Summer School,  Center on Reinventing Public Education. 06/03/2020.
  4. Gill, J. “READS: Helping Children Become Summer Bookworms,” Wallace Foundation research summary, July 2018.
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