It usually refers to learning loss in reading and math, though other areas of child development can be affected, like behavior.
The term gained popularity in the 90s when researchers began studying how the summer break’s dip in learning snowballed into cumulative effects year after year. On average, students lose about 20% of their school-year gains in reading and 27% in math.
StateImpact visited two Oklahoma schools that provide free, multi-week summer programming to see how districts hope to make a dent in learning loss.
Woodward cave adventures
At Woodward Public Schools, about 50 middle school students are spending their summer at the district’s eight-week, themed summer program. Each week, students learn about a different topic, like pyrotechnics, outer space, Oklahoma history or engineering, and then go on a field trip at the end of the week that coordinates with the theme.
For cave week, the students prepared for their field trip by learning about cave formations and making cave painting crafts before heading to Alabaster Caverns State Park for a guided tour of a gypsum cave.
While exploring the cave, students learned about bats, the Mohs hardness scale, Oklahoma history and erosion. Afterward, eighth-grader Emma Scarborough said her favorite part was learning about a cave formation named Martha and George Washington’s Upside-Down Bathtubs.
“It’s two tubs, like upside-down in the ceiling,” Scarborough said. “And one of them is Martha’s, and she has a headrest and a crack in her bath. And George Washington’s has two armrests, a headrest and a soap dish.”
The program started last year. They used leftover federal pandemic funds this year to double the number of students participating and weeks that programming is offered. Because the federal ESSER money will run out, program coordinator and teacher Jessie Pingry hopes they can continue the program with 21st Century Learning grants, which are federal dollars provided to high-poverty schools for academic enrichment opportunities.
She said Woodward’s program also provides basic necessities to the students of the rural community.
“If we take out the education aspect, they just have a safe place to go every day,” Pingry said. “Someone’s checking in on them every day, and we provide breakfast and lunch for them every day. And we have a large group of kids here that we refer to as our ‘backpack kids’ who get food to take home because of food insecurity. So it’s just another layer to help those kids and families.”
Pingry said students journal nearly every day to keep up their writing skills. Many students are English Language Learners and teachers have been gradually helping them phase in English writing with their Spanish.
The district also partners with Western Plains Youth and Family Services for weekly social-emotional learning lessons.
Woodward is located in northwestern Oklahoma, near the panhandle. Pingry said a major motivation for the program’s frequent field trips was the limitations on exploration in rural areas like hers.
“Last week, we took them to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. And the lady there asked, ‘How many have ever been to an art museum?’ And no one raised their hand,” Pingry said. “And then she said, ‘Well, how many people have been to any museums?’ And we still had a significant amount of kids … that had never even been to a museum at all. So those opportunities are invaluable for our kids, just to see what’s beyond our small community.”
Pingry said summer programming is important not only for academic reasons but also because students break their daily routines if they stay at home all summer.
“We see a big shift in kids. In the summer, they don’t go to bed on time,” Pingry said. “And a big difference that we have now is technology. They’re just so used to being on technology, a phone or an iPad or something, hours and hours and hours a day. And so when they come into the classroom, they have a hard time just with socialization and sitting still and not being constantly entertained by technology. … It takes them quite a while to get back into the swing of coming to school.”
Asked what students would rather be doing if they weren’t on the caving field trip, they responded with several answers: watching TV, swimming, babysitting, building experiments — but by far, the most popular answer was sleeping.
What students need in the summer and how schools can step in
In a recent study, the nonprofit Rand Corporation found summer school students outperformed their peers when they got 25 hours of math and 35 hours of reading. Senior researcher Catherine Augustine said the benefits of summer school can extend into behavior, too.
“We did, in our study, look at social and emotional competencies. We looked in particular at self-regulation and self-motivation,” Augustine said. “And we did find that kids who attended at least 20 days of a summer program — the ones we were studying — for two summers in a row … their school-year teachers rated them higher or better in self-regulation and self-motivation.”
The nonprofit released guidelines for recommended practices to maximize effectiveness in summer programming. Those metrics include:
- Planning early and thoroughly. Decide who is going to administer the program and stay up-to-date with regular planning deadlines throughout the school year.
- Use enrichment activities and academics
- Utilize data-gathering like pre- and post-observations and interviews to collect data points on how the program can improve. Share the data to reinforce the community’s commitment to prioritizing the program.
- Recruit and hire the district’s best teachers and provide them with quality professional development before the summer program begins.
- Create a program that lasts at least five to six weeks with 90 or more minutes of math and 120 or more minutes of English Language Arts each day. This will allow a typical student who attends 75% of the program to reach the threshold for research-supported outcomes on curbing summer learning loss.
- Prioritize attendance. This can be done through finding the best schedule that works for certain communities, personalized recruiting throughout the school year and using an attendance policy and/or attendance incentives to get students to school.
- Train staff on the importance of fostering a warm, friendly environment that encourages students to attend.
While “summer slide” often refers to academics, mental health can be another area where students’ well-being dips while they’re out of school.
Sabrina Nasta is a Florida-based therapist who works with clients of all ages, specializing in anxiety, grief and trauma. She said adolescents can experience stress and confusion during the summer because they may not have the developmental maturity to prioritize activities. Without accessible activities, sleeping can be an easy go-to for middle and high school students.
“When it comes to the aspect of having so much free time, they want to do so much. But because their minds are still developing. They’re still understanding, ‘What options do I have?’” Nasta said. “Imagine being that young, still learning the world, and then also creating your own reality for like 60 days. It’s a lot of pressure and too many options.”
Nasta said some students may be lucky enough to have the financial means to go to summer camps or live in neighborhoods with community centers or pools. But other students may find themselves alone for the majority of the day.
“If you’re isolated, it can be — I hate to use the word ‘depressing’, but it can be depressing for children because they have nothing to look forward to, nothing that they’re working towards,” Nasta said. “Every day, it’s kind of like … ‘I’m waiting for the next day. Okay, I’m waiting for the next day,’ and it becomes a little redundant.”
Novel studies at Tulsa Public Schools
The stakes are high at all schools to keep kids engaged through the break, but an especially bright spotlight is on Tulsa Public Schools. State Superintendent Ryan Walters requires the district to present monthly public status updates, with a major focus on improving reading skills. Two of the three demands from the State Board of Education are higher literacy rates and science of reading training for teachers.
This summer, the district’s Ready, Set, Summer! program offers students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grades a month of free, full-day programming. Students receive breakfast and lunch, and transportation is provided. The district partners with the Tulsa Dream Center, the YMCA, the Boys and Girls Club and other community organizations to offer enrichment programs and sends students to field trips at places like the Oklahoma Aquarium.
For high school students, the district offers a credit recovery “boot camp,” which are four-week remedial programs designed for students to catch up on required credits to graduate on time.
At Mitchell Elementary, students across the school site are focusing their activities around literature. Activities are geared toward helping kids dive deeper into reading — and have fun while they do it.
Program director Tucker Hopper, a third-grade teacher at the district, said during the school year, teachers are focused on so many things, there often isn’t space to slow down and incorporate activity-based learning at the same level that summer programs offer.
“It’s a bummer that through the school year, there’s not time for things like this,” Hopper said. “I mean, being able to dive into the novel studies. … Our curriculum through the year, it’s full of stories, but you don’t get that full range, get to dive into the character development, get to do the project things that you would have time to do during the summer.”
Throughout the school, students are focused on reading. In one classroom, third-grade students who struggle with reading receive targeted and comprehensive instruction as they read a novel about farm workers.
Kindergarten students create solar prints of nature scenes and learn about the effects of ultraviolet rays with shapes cut out on special paper and laid out under the sun. While the projects sit, students lounge outside reading books.
In another kindergarten class, students create tie dye-like papers from shaving cream and colored dye to eventually cut out butterflies. Those will be put out on the “insect wall” in the hallway to go with the books they’ve been reading, like “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and “The Grouchy Ladybug.”
Fourth graders prepare for their end-of-the-summer parent night by creating a walk-through classroom experience decorated with scenes from “James and the Giant Peach,” complete with a theatrical performance with student-made costumes.
Their teacher, Tabitha Dowler, said she’s been pleasantly surprised at how eager the students are to read.
“I expected them to like [the book], but they don’t want to stop reading it. I had to make us stop today, and they were really upset,” Dowler said.
Dowler said this kind of project-based learning sparks a different kind of interest in her students.
“That is just a different type of learning than we do during most of the school year,” Dowler said. “I feel like this is more hands-on, discussion-based. And you can tell that they really understand the characters and the plot, and they just get really excited about reading the whole book all the way through to see what happens from beginning to end.”
Hopper said the district is redefining how students think about summer school, and he hopes it will effectively prepare them for the school year ahead.
“Typically when you think ‘summer school,’ there could be — some might pin it with a negative tone. And that’s not what it is,” Hopper said. “This is where you get that exciting curriculum, and you get to do the projects and the trips and the community partners that we have come visit. I just want to expose the learning as much as I can, because this is effective.”
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