Summer School Programs and Effects on Achievement

 

Contrary to popular opinion, most students, even those considered “at-risk,” make adequate academic progress during the school year. Researchers find that it is actually during the summer months that they tend to fall behind.

Summer Months and Academic Loss

Research reveals some sobering facts about the effects of being out of school in the summer and academic achievement. It appears that in general, children from lower-income families tend to show a drop of nearly three months of grade level equivalency each year during the summer, when compared to just a one-month loss by middle-income students.

What is even more disheartening is that these summer losses in achievement can add up year after year and may be the major cause as to why the achievement gap between low- and high-income students continues to grow throughout the elementary school years. Add this all up, and in the elementary grades a summer loss of three months will eventually accumulate to become a gap of 18 months by the end of the 6 th grade. By middle school, this can produce a cumulative lag of two or more years in reading achievement, even when effective instruction during the school year is available.

Effects of Summer Reading Programs on Academic Achievement

Yet, there is also research that shows that this academic drop can be addressed by providing rich educational experiences for children during the summer. Studies that compared reading comprehension and vocabulary test scores showed an increase in both sets of scores in students who participated in summer reading programs and decreased in those that did not. There is also research that shows that the number of books read during the summer is also consistently related to academic gains and that children, regardless of their family income level, who read six or more books over the summer showed an increase in reading achievement compared to children who did not participate in summer reading camps. Research has shown that children who continue to read during the summer vacation perform better in the fall when school resumes.

How Summer Reading Programs Can Help

Since there is research that suggests that the losses are greatest in the summers of the first three to four years of school, preventing these losses could perhaps make the gap much smaller and thus help students prepare for school in the fall.

Summer learning programs, encompassing everything from summer camps to library reading clubs to youth organizations to cultural enrichment programs, can play an important role in addressing the loss in academic achievement, particularly for children from low-income families.

Key Components to Summer School Success

It is essential that summer programs provide quality experiences to ensure children continue to learn. Aside from providing a strong instructional program that is led by great educators, here are some other components to ensuring your summer program is a success:

1. Get Parents / Guardians Involved

While it is not always easy to involve busy parents, successful summer programs have found ways to stimulate parental involvement including inviting parents to a kickoff or program-end celebration to serve as volunteers and even as employees of the program. One example of a creative way to involve parents is having them read or do other literacy activities with their children for 15-30 minutes when they pick them up or drop them off at a summer program. One of the most common methods of getting parents involved is encouraging them to read with their children for a certain amount of time every day or monitor how much they read by themselves.

2. Make learning fun

Every parent and educator knows that to keep kids learning you need to make learning fun. Many summer reading programs include additional components like arts and crafts, physical activities, dance, drama and technology as a way to keep children engaged and motivated. Many summer camps are now introducing a technology component to their offerings. This can be particularly helpful to students Research shows that summer camps that include these additional components show an increase in attendance rates. Therefore, not only will children want to continue to attend summer camp (which is often completely voluntary), but they will also have a richer learning experience. (Volunteers and employees will also benefit from the different activities.)

3. Build Relationships with Community Partners

To ensure your summer program’s continued growth, it is vital to build partnerships with businesses and organizations in the community. They can not only provide you with valuable resources and sponsorship but can also prove to be a powerful form of publicity. Some businesses can provide instructional materials, such as classroom supplies and software, as well as arrange for employees to volunteer their time by mentoring children or even speaking at the kick-off or end-of-program celebration.

Striving to include these components as part of your summer school offering will ensure that you give children the preparation they need to succeed when they go back to school in the fall.

Learning Today is committed to helping summer school programs at the city, county and state level. Please contact Robin Baker at robin@learningtoday.com or call 954-584-5250 to see how we can complement your school’s summer program. Smart Tutor is a reading program that automatically assesses and then creates an individualized instructional program for each student on a sub skill level. This makes it a perfect complement to any reading program to help provide struggling learners with the skills they need to help them fill in reading gaps.

References:

Johnson, Peter. Building Effective Programs for Summer Learning. U.S. Department of Education, 2000.

Carter, Vivian. The Effects of Summer Reading Participation on the Retention of Reading Skills. Illinois Libraries 70:1 (1988) pp 56-60
Heyns, Barbara. Summer Learning and the Effects of Schooling (Academic Press, 1978)

McGill-Franzen, Anne and Richard Allington. “Bridging the Summer Reading Gap” Instructor, May/June, 2003.

 

Resources:

http://www.ed.gov/inits/americareads/sum_build.doc

http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/libdev/summer/research.pdf