Summer learning loss or summer slide, is the loss of academic skills and knowledge over the course of summer vacation in countries that have lengthy breaks in the school year, such as the United States and Canada. Schools see evidence of this because students are often given a standardised test prior to the summer break and again when they return to school in the autumn.
Research studies produce different results as to the extent of the loss, however they all appear to agree that the loss in learning varies across age and grade, subject matter, and family income and socioeconomic status.
In 2017, one review of the research in the United States concluded that: Entwisle, D., Alexander, K., & Olson, L. 2000. “Summer Learning and Home Environment.” In R. Kahlenberg Ed., A Notion at Risk: Preserving Public Education as an Engine for Social Mobility pp. 9-30. New York: Century Foundation Press. On average, students lost one month of learning over the summer months. Students lost more of their math ability than their reading ability. Students in higher grades lost more of their learning in general than those in lower grades. Students from low-income households lost reading ability, but students in middle- and high-income households gained some. There was no difference in loss or gain based on gender or race in either math or reading.
There is, however, some evidence that losses in learning over summer break can be relatively easily recovered.
Gap and summer learning loss
Mathematics Students score lower on standardised maths tests at the end of the summer, as compared to their own performance on the same tests at the beginning of summer.Cooper, H., Nye, B., Charlton, K., Lindsay, J., & Greathouse, S. 1996. “The effects of summer vacation on achievement test scores: A narrative and metaanalytic review.” Review of Educational Research, 66, 227–268. This loss was most acute in factual and procedural learning such as mathematical computation, where an average setback of more than two months of grade-level equivalency was observed among both middle- and lower-class students.
Reading In reading and language, substantial differences were found between middle-class and lower-class students. Whereas middle-class students showed a non-significant gain in reading scores, lower-class students showed a significant loss that represented a gap of about three months of grade-level equivalent reading skills between middle- and lower-class students.
These results are consistent with other researchers' findings that a family's socioeconomic status affects children's achievement scores almost exclusively when school is closed. Barbara Heyns' 1978 study of 2,978 sixth- and seventh-graders in the Atlanta city public schools was the first thorough investigation of summer learning.Heyns, Barbara. 1978. “Summer Learning and the effects of schooling”. Orlando, FL: Academic.Press. Heyns found that while poor children and black children came close to keeping up with middle-class children in cognitive growth when school was in session, they lagged far behind during the summer.
In 1982, researchers Doris Entwistle and Karl Alexander extended Barbara Heyns' line of research through the Beginning School Study, which compared the school-year and summer achievement gains of 790 youths across 20 of Baltimore's public schools from the beginning of first grade in 1982 through the end of elementary school and tracked these students' progress through high school and college. They found that in year nine, the low-socioeconomic status group's reading comprehension average lagged 73 points behind the high-status group's on the California Achievement Test (CAT-V).Alexander, Karl, Entwisle, Doris, and Olson, Linda. 2004. “Schools, Achievement, and Inequality: A Seasonal Perspective.” In Geoffrey Borman and Matthew Boulay Eds., Summer learning research, policies, and programs pp. 25-51. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates. About a third of the 73 points' difference (27 points) was in place when the students started first grade. After the first grade, the low-status students fall further behind each year, with the gap reaching a plateau of around 70 points in the 5th grade. The remaining two-thirds of the 73 point gap accumulate over the course of the elementary and middle school years, with 48.5 points being attributed to the cumulative summer learning gap from the five elementary years.
Researchers from The Ohio State University extended summer learning gap research further by conducting a national study of 17,000 kindergarten and first grade children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. The authors confirmed earlier findings of an unequal starting point, showing that a standard deviation's advantage in socioeconmic status predicts a 1.77 month advantage in initial reading skill on the first day of kindergarten.Downey, D., von Hippel, P., & Broh, B. 2004. “Are Schools the Great Equalizer? Cognitive Inequality during the Summer Months and the School Year.” American Sociological Review, 69 5, 613-635. The authors also confirmed that the socioeconomic status achievement gap continues to grow after schooling starts, with summer learning accounting for the vast majority of the difference. While the average kindergarten learning rate was 1.65 test points per month, a standard deviation's advantage in socioeconomic status predicted a relative gain of 0.16 points per month during summer, 0.07 points per month during kindergarten, and 0.05 points per month during first grade.
Magnitude In the United States, roughly 48 million children are enrolled in K-12 public schools, only 9.2 percent of which attend summer school programs.Alexander, K., Entwisle, D., & Olson, L. 2007. Summer learning and its implications: Insights from the Beginning School Study. In R. Fairchild, & G. Noam Eds., “Summertime : Confronting Risks, Exploring Solutions” pp. 33-43. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass/Wiley. These summer school programs typically differ significantly from the regular school program in terms of curriculum, goals and rigor. Because summer school programs are voluntary, self-selection also confounds the effects of attendance. Due to these differences, most summer school programs have not been effective in reducing the achievement gap between youth of low and high socioeconomic status, and in some cases actually exacerbate the gaps.
The early learning gap among low-status students, which is predominantly driven by summer learning loss in the elementary school years, casts a long achievement shadow. When compared to high-status youth, the low-status youth are "more likely to enter adulthood without high school certification (36 percent versus 3 percent at age twenty-two) and less likely to attend a four-year college (7 percent versus 59 percent, also at age twenty-two)." The college wage premium (calculated as the ratio of the median hourly wage for those holding a bachelor's degree compared to the median hourly wage for those who have only completed high school) doubled from 1967 to 1997, while the dropout penalty similarly doubled.Welch, F. 1999. “In Defense of Inequality.” The American Economic Review, 89 2, 1-17. In an economy that is increasingly unaccommodating of low-skill workers, joblessness and declining wages are related to growth in ghetto poverty.Wilson, W.J. 1996. “When Work Disappears”. New York: Alfred Knopf. In characterizing the U.S. poverty population, John Iceland revealed that "poor African-American children are less likely to escape poverty than others – 1 in 3 were still poor at ages 25 to 27, as compared to 1 in 12 white children."Iceland, J. 2003. “Poverty in America.” Berkeley: University of California Press.
Vulnerable learners Cooper's 1996 study indicates that the gap in the learning cycle which occurs during summer vacation is more prominent for children that are less advantaged. Children who are the most susceptible are those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnic minorities and students with exceptionalities.Kim, 2006 Further, it is predominantly literacy related skills that are affected the most.Graham, McNamara and VanLankveld, 2011, pg.575
In a study conducted by Kim (2006), an intervention was designed to provide children with effective summer learning experiences and improve the reading abilities of minority students and struggling readers. Its results indicated that the most significant reading gains occurred for disadvantaged students while students from middle to high socio-economic upbringings remained stable on standardised measures of reading. However, these findings were not consistent with a 2010 review by Guryan and Kim, whereby a summer reading intervention was implemented for low-income Latino children. Low-income parents often lack the resources to provide children with sufficient reading materials needed to reinforce important literacy skills. Additional exposure to print material may be difficult for children in homes where English is not the native language.
High-achieving students are much less affected than others by the school year. High-achieving students maintain approximately the same steady rate of skill growth regardless of whether school is in session, whereas average students grow faster during the school year and plateau during the summer.
Interventions
Summer programs
After-school activities and summer programs can play a role in combating summer learning loss. Studies indicate that students that are able to participate in organised academic activities during the summer months are less likely to experience losses in academic skills and knowledge before the start of the next school year.
For students, there are different kinds of summer programs available that provide different activities and enrichment for students focusing on decreasing the achievement gap by developing their reading and math skills through the summer. These types of programs focus on the student's ability to retain the knowledge they have gained through the academic year. While some do provide students with the same curriculum used in their academic school year, there are other approaches that either contribute more or less of a school-based curriculum for their programs.McCombs, Jennifer Sloan, Catherine H. Augustine, Fatih Unlu, Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, Scott Naftel, Celia J. Gomez, Terry Marsh, Goke Akinniranye, and Ivy Todd, Investing in Successful Summer Programs: A Review of Evidence Under the Every Student Succeeds Act. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2019. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2836.html. Also available in print form.
Some programs focus on what type of help students need most and develop a customized learning plan. Other programs focus more on preparing students for the upcoming school year and the new concepts they will be learning. Some programs serve as transition programs to help students move from elementary school to middle school, and middle school to high school.Kathleen M. Cauley & Donna Jovanovich (2006) Developing an Effective Transition Program for Students Entering Middle School or High School, The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 80:1, 15-25, DOI: 10.3200/TCHS.80.1.15-25 There are also programs that just solely have activities that students can participate in without any instructional time dedicated to improving the skills of students.<ref>McCombs, Jennifer Sloan, Catherine H. Augustine, Heather L. Schwartz, Susan J. Bodilly, Brian Mcinnis, Dahlia S. Lichter, and Amanda Brown Cross. Making Summer Count: How Summer Programs Can Boost Children’s Learning. RAND Corporation, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mg1120wf.</ '''Since students from lower socioeconomic status have been identified as those who struggle the most, these free programs were developed to combat the issue of the achievement gap.<ref>'''</ref>