Sustaining the Summer High
Stephen M. Pratt, President
Dear Friends:
As summer begins to wane and Back-to-School circulars flood our mailboxes, we turn our attention to a critical but often overlooked element of the Out-of-School Time world: summer programming. Whether children sit by a campfire roasting s’mores, in a museum with time to explore, or in a classroom learning to multiply fours, summer offers a unique opportunity to carry progress forward and to offer struggling students a fresh approach.
And the stakes are high. According to the Center for Summer Learning:
All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer.
On average, students lose approximately 2.6 months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months.
Low-income children and youth experience greater summer learning losses than their higher income peers.
Summer learning loss contributes to the achievement gap in reading performance between lower and higher income children and youth.
Broadly, we support and nurture the development of models that align the distinct milieus of in-school and out-of-school into a coordinated strategy for youth development. Summer programs in particular reveal how compelling and how challenging this vision is.
How often have we heard stories of young people who have turned a corner because of a powerful summer experience? And yet, it is incredibly rare to see an explicit and intentional connection between those summer breakthroughs and the school year.
In this issue, we offer a collection of research, resources, and reviews of the summer experience. We’re particularly pleased to share our first guest column, from our friends at United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Mass Mentoring Partnership. We invite you to join in the dialogue and share your own reflections on the world of after school and beyond.
Thanks for reading,
Guest Column
The summer weather predictably has heated up the rhetoric about preventing youth violence. And while the ensuing call for more funding for more police presence and more summer jobs for youth was necessary and is worthy of support, it is not the only solution....
By Milton J. Little, Jr., UWMB and David Shapiro, Mass Mentoring Partnership
New Additions on this Topic to our Online Research Library
Youth Development Outcomes of the Camp Experience
Between 2001 and 2004 the American Camp Association conducted research with over 5000 families from 80 ACA-Accredited camps to determine the outcomes of the camp experience as expressed by parents and children.
Summer School and Summer Learning 2002: Progress and Challenges
David Denton
In June 2002, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) adopted a new set of goals for the 21st century. Those goals included reaching every student, from preschool to high school, to ensure that achievement exceeds national averages and that performance gaps are closed. According to this brief report, research clearly shows that quality summer programs for struggling students are essential to closing those gaps.
Center for Summer Learning
Excerpts from the Center's Summary of research on summer learning programs: • All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer (Cooper, 1996). • On average, students lose approximately 2.6 months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months (Cooper, 1996). • Elementary schools and youth development organizations should form partnerships to prevent summer loss in reading among low-income students (Schacter, 2003). • Summer learning should be a community-wide, inter-agency priority. The Center also presented Focus on Student Achievement: Characteristics of Effective Summer Programs at the Eastern Regional Conference on After-School, May 10, 2005 at John Hopkins University.
Building Effective Programs for Summer Learning
Careful analysis of statistics on the academic gap between high- and low-income children's reading scores on the California Achievement Test illustrates the importance of summer learning. Disadvantaged kids' summer losses are especially large during the breaks between the first three or four years of school, and so preventing these losses could make the gap much smaller.