Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Summer Counts: Making Summer Programs Part of the Learning Equation

Summer vacation takes a toll on students' knowledge and skills. When they report to school in the fall, they perform, on average, one month behind where they left off in the spring. Of course, not all students experience 'average' losses. Summer learning loss disproportionately affects low-income students. While all students lose some ground in mathematics over the summer, low-income students lose more ground in reading, while their higher-income peers may even gain. Most disturbing is that summer learning loss is cumulative; over time, the difference between the summer learning rates of low-income and higher-income students contributes substantially to the achievement gap.


Source: RAND Corporation

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