Summer school makes an unlikely candidate for a bright spot in education reform during these difficult economic times. It occupies a long-held negative place in U.S. culture, prompting dread in the hearts of many former and current students. Summer school conjures up images of sitting in hot classrooms and receiving remedial instruction while others swim, play, and enjoy the bounties of summer vacation. It's often framed as punishment for poor academic performance, carrying a stigma for students and teachers that can result in low attendance and lackluster outcomes.
It's no big surprise, then, that summer school is considered an afterthought by most school leaders and that it's often the first program they cut when school budgets are slashed. Districts and states have reduced funding for summer school across the United States, particularly in such hard-hit areas as California, where Los Angeles has all but eliminated its summer school programs for the last three years; support for those programs went from $54 million in 2006 down to a mere $3 million in 2011.
Yet despite these seemingly overwhelming obstacles, many urban districts are helping create a new vision of summer school that may transform teaching and learning. This is due in large part to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) passed in 2009. ARRA led to an unprecedented federal investment of more than $200 million in summer school programs over the last two years. More important, these investments supported a new approach to summer school that provides innovative, comprehensive, and engaging programs.
As the only national organization exclusively focused on this issue, the National Summer Learning Association has been leading the charge for a new vision for summer school since 2008 and has been working closely with a growing network of 16 urban school districts committed to making summer school and summer learning an essential component of their education reform agenda. Through robust partnerships with local nonprofit partners, these districts leverage community resources and better engage students in different types of learning—while also keeping costs down.
Why Summer?
Why should school leaders invest in summer learning? Put simply, when students aren't engaged in learning during the summer, they fall behind in math and reading. Research shows that all students lose about two months of math skills; low-income students lose two months in reading skills as well. The research on reading loss is particularly troubling because higher-income students actually make slight gains in reading during the summer. In fact, a landmark study from Johns Hopkins University shows that two-thirds of the 9th grade achievement gap in reading is the result of unequal learning opportunities during the summer months.
As a result of a variety of factors, many students in high-poverty communities have few learning opportunities during the summer, as opposed to their higher-income peers, who often learn through enrichment activities such as camp, vacations, field trips, and time spent with families. Indeed, many of the new summer school programs try to provide students with the types of enrichment activities that many of us may take for granted, in addition to academic instruction.
The first challenge is making stakeholders aware of the importance of summer learning; the next challenge is moving beyond remedial summer school. The summer months provide the ideal time for schools to pilot new approaches to teaching and learning that look and feel different from those offered in the regular school year.
Nine Principles of Summer Learning
- Increase the duration, intensity, and scope of the traditional summer school model to a comprehensive, research-based, six-week, full-day model that makes summer an essential component of school district reform.
- Expand participation beyond students struggling academically to all students in schoolwide Title I programs, and consider expanded-year programs that include all students in participating schools.
- Change the focus from narrow remediation and test preparation to a blended approach of both academic learning in core subject areas and enrichment activities that provide hands-on, engaging programming, fostering such crucial 21st century skills as collaboration, innovation, creativity, communication, and data analysis.
- Strengthen and expand partnerships with community-based organizations and public agencies that provide summer activities to leverage existing resources, identify and meet gaps in service, improve program quality, and develop shared outcomes for summer success.
- Include strategies to improve student attendance and engagement by providing healthy food, field trips, recreation, and comprehensive supports.
- Provide innovative professional development for educators and ensure that summer programs offer teachers a chance to test new models of teaching and gain valuable leadership experience.
- Include innovative approaches to learning for older students, including proficiency-based learning, flexible credit recovery, internships, college visits, and other college and career readiness opportunities that provide targeted interventions and workforce development skills that prepare students for future success.
- Target key transition periods such as kindergarten, middle school, and high school to ensure that students are prepared for success in new environments.
- Move summer learning from the periphery to the center of school reform strategies through sustainable and stable funding, long-term planning, robust assessment and evaluation, and improved infrastructure and data collection.
The New Vision in Action
Following are snapshots of selected district programs that provide a sense of what schools and their community partners can do during the summer.
Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh Public Schools
Leaders in Pittsburgh decided to dedicate more than $10 million of their ARRA Title I funds for a new program called the Summer Dreamers Academy. The five-week program focuses on literacy and fun, with complementary enrichment activities. The program was open to all middle school students in 2010; after a successful summer that saw a 400 percent jump in attendance, the program was offered to all elementary and middle school students in 2011.
Choice is a key element of the program. Students can pick from more than 90 different enrichment activities offered by community partners that align with academic instruction, such as judo, kayaking, fencing, ceramics, compact disc creation, and biking. At the end of the summer, students showcase the development of their individual interests and literacy skills through a culminating project, demonstration, or presentation in the form of podcasts, short movies, television advertisements, skits, songs, or dances. Pittsburgh illustrated that schools can use Title I funds to support academic enrichment activities and not simply remedial instruction.
Maryland: Baltimore City Public Schools
Baltimore introduced several new summer programs in 2010 to provide more choice to a wider cross-section of students. The programs, which targeted middle school students, included an emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) as well as youth development. Students received swimming lessons from Baltimore native and Olympian Michael Phelps. A course on robotics culminated in a STEM championship competition, in which more than 100 middle school teams demonstrated their projects and creations.
- There was a 23 percent increase in students moving from basic to proficient or advanced in math.
- There was an 18 percent increase in students moving from basic to proficient or advanced in language arts.
- Seventy percent of students who participated in their middle grade summer program last year didn't experience any summer learning loss.
Ohio: Cincinnati Public Schools
In 2009, Cincinnati Public Schools also decided to dedicate ARRA funds to summer programs and created the Fifth Quarter, a four-week, full-day extension of the school year at low-performing elementary schools. The program completed its third year in 2011; school leaders cited the program as helping Cincinnati become the only urban district in Ohio to be rated as effective by the state education department.
The Fifth Quarter draws heavily on an existing community-school partnership infrastructure that involves nearly 60 local organizations during the summer. These organizations work with schools to develop afternoon enrichment activities ranging from martial arts to environmental education that reinforce math and reading lessons. This new approach resulted in an attendance jump from 750 students in 2008 to 2,500 students in 2010.
Cincinnati has also been creative with funding, using the federal government's 21st Century Community Learning Centers, the Summer Food Service Program from the United States Department of Agriculture, and support from the United Way as well as other community organizations. This year, the district provides 60 percent of the funding, with the community providing the remaining 40 percent.
Texas: Dallas Independent School District
In 2010, Dallas Independent School District and Big Thought, a local nonprofit focused on partnerships and arts education, collaborated to replace traditional summer school for elementary students with the Thriving Minds Summer Camp. The program is notable for both creative school-community partnerships and innovative project-based learning.
Last year's summer camp involved 43 community organizations that shared staff, supplies, and facilities. The program brought together teachers, instructional specialists, community artists, school principals, and fine arts instructors to develop curriculum and instruct students at 22 sites serving 156 elementary schools. The curriculum emphasized arts-based activities and projects that reinforced core academic concepts. For example, students learned how to perform Texas folk songs and dances that connected to the Texas state history curriculum.
Instructors measured student progress through a portfolio system that they shared with students' home schools; the schools used the portfolios to determine the appropriate level of instruction for each student when school started in the fall.
The partnership led to several cost efficiencies that will interest school leaders looking to invest in innovative summer programs without breaking the bank. For example, the Dallas Independent School District supported many logistical activities, such as facilities, transportation, food, and supplies, while Big Thought provided site managers, staff to integrate enrichment activities and academics, and joint professional development. This cost-efficient model enables the district to take care of challenging and often costly logistical issues while freeing up community partners to focus on innovative and engaging instruction.
Making the Case
Despite these recent investments and innovations, there is little hope for improved education budgets in the near future. In fact, with the end of ARRA funds, support for summer school and other key programs is likely to get worse before it gets better. As a result, district and summer learning advocates must be creative, efficient, and aggressive to ensure that these initial efforts are sustained and expanded.
One key strategy is to focus on the use of existing funding streams for summer programs. Many school leaders are unaware that they can use Title I and other school improvement dollars for summer programs that include enrichment activities that complement academic instruction. Schools can also partner with summer programs run by libraries, parks, and youth employment agencies to align and stretch public funds to provide a full day of programming.
The main challenge for summer learning advocates is to convince school leaders that summer programs are essential for school success and are not simply a "nice thing to do" if funds are left over from the school year. To make that case, we must show the effect of summer programs on student outcomes in both academics and behavior. Districts and their summer learning partners must also illustrate the cost-effectiveness of such approaches. The keys to achieving these goals are strong community partnerships, creative use of public and private funds, and a focus on student engagement. Summer programs like these provide a blueprint for making teaching and learning fun and successful—not just in the summer, but throughout the school year.
