Resources for Afterschool Professionals

This guide includes an overview of summer learning loss and practical suggestions for programs on how to close the "gap," as well as profiles of programs in New York City. It also provides practical tools and ideas for afterschool staff on how to create and support an environment of learning in summer programs.

Time Magazine's August 2, 2010 cover story on opportunities to address summer learning loss.

When school doors close for the summer, what do kids face? For some, it’s a world of interesting vacations, music lessons, and library trips. For others without enriching summertime opportunities, the break can lead to serious academic consequences—and the disparity can be dramatic.

The RAND Corporation has released a research study, Making Summer Count: How Summer Programs Can Boost Children's Learning, which addresses summer learning issues facing low-income students. In the publication, RAND researchers find evidence of ways to ease the problem, and analyze costs, challenges and opportunities.

The National Summer Learning Project, launched by the Wallace Foundation in 2011, includes an assessment of the effectiveness of voluntary, district-led summer learning programs offered at no cost to low-income, urban elementary students. The study, conducted by RAND, uses a randomized controlled trial and other analytic methods to assess the effects of district-led programs on academic achievement, social-emotional competencies, and behavior over the near and long term. All students in the study were in the third grade as of spring 2013 and enrolled in a public school in one of five urban districts: Boston; Dallas; Duval County, Florida; Pittsburgh; or Rochester, New York. The study follows these students from third to seventh grade; this report describes outcomes through fifth grade. The primary focus is on academic outcomes but students' social-emotional outcomes are also examined, as well as behavior and attendance during the school year. Among the key findings are that students with high attendance in one summer benefited in mathematics and that these benefits persisted through the following spring; students with high attendance in the second summer benefited in mathematics and language arts and in terms of social-emotional outcomes; and that high levels of academic time on task led to benefits that persisted in both mathematics and language arts.