Students pay dearly for a long summer break from school: On average, they return in the fall a month behind where they were at the close of the prior academic year, and kids from low-income households typically slip even further.
Now a new report suggests that when it comes to summer enrichment programs, the opportunities that might help slow that academic slide for struggling students are out of reach for many families.
Among the spotlighted early findings from the Afterschool Alliance's forthcoming America After 3pm report, which was drawn from a survey of nearly 14,000 households nationally:
The percentage of families with at least one child participating in a summer learning program was 33 percent, up from 25 percent in 2009;
Just over half of respondents said they wanted their kids to experience summer learning, and that more than eight in 10 said they supported public funding for such opportunities;
And while 13 percent of respondents said their children attended summer learning programs free of charge, those who did pay fees said it cost an average of250 -- "placing it out of reach for many families," according to the report.
Why does summer learning loss matter? Researchers contend that how students spend their time during the long break should be part of any conversation about overall school improvement. Consider this: One long-term study found that students learn at about the same rate during the course of the traditional 180-day academic year, regardless of their socioeconomic status. The achievement gap has been found to narrow between fall and spring, and then widens again over the summer. (For more on academic calendars and why year-round schooling isn't necessarily the best option for many districts or students, check out Education Week's recent piece on a new Congressional Research Service report.)
As Stanford education Professor Sean Reardon posited in his opinion piece for the New York Times last year, "it may seem counterintuitive, but schools don't seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students. ... The more we do to ensure that all children have similar cognitively stimulating early childhood experiences, the less we will have to worry about failing schools."
Read the full story in the Huffington Post.
Sean Reardon is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He is a member of the Center for Education Policy Analysis(link is external) at Stanford.
© Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.
