Starting School With Success: How Summer Learning Closes Gaps in the Early Years

As is well known, CGLR has long emphasized summer learning as a primary strategy for advancing early school success. We have advocated for the expansion of summer learning opportunities across communities and increased access for children from economically challenged families. Since the school closures necessitated by the pandemic, it became even more urgent to make the most of learning during the summer months. Significant federal funding responded to this urgency, which has been bolstered by national and local philanthropy. These investments have led to successful new and expanded programs that are reaching many more children. In this week’s session, we had the chance to explore a few of these programs and their impact. 

Moderator and summer learning champion Natalia Sol of the National Summer Learning Association introduced the discussion with a deep exploration of Bloomberg Philanthropy’s Summer Boost program and its recently released evaluation. Caitlin Hannon of Building Impact Partners shared the history of the program’s development and the expansion across seven cities, enabled by support from Bloomberg. Jackie Taslim of the Lavinia Group discussed their innovative curriculum, Rise Summer Learning, which includes assessment tools that were used across several sites and enabled an in-depth evaluation. Geoffrey Borman, Ph.D., of the Mary Lou Felton Teachers College at Arizona State University, who was the lead researcher on the evaluation, unpacked the findings that demonstrate how students engaged in Summer Boost achieved significant gains in math and English Language Arts and experienced academic recovery across demographics and education levels. Hannon captured what worked so well about Summer Boost and the Rise curriculum and why summer is a valuable time to learn outside of school: 

“One nice thing that’s tied directly to the Rise curriculum is the ability to go narrow and deep, whereas any of us who’ve been in the classroom know that it’s just like, let’s just keep going, gotta keep going. We gotta go. We covered that last week. We gotta cover this this week. [Yet in the summer, you have the ability to] look at those foundational skills and go as deep as you can.” 

Sol then engaged with three local and national leaders who are effectively engaging the youngest learners in summer learning as they move into kindergarten and through the early grades of elementary school. Liz Obara Piedramartel, Ph.D., of the Patterson Park Public Charter School in Baltimore shared her experience operating the Summer Boost program and the results gained by her students and talked about how her school provides preparation for kindergarten. Kelli Marshall of The Mind Trust in Indianapolis discussed their “Indy Summer Learning Labs” and the key aspect of teacher professional development that makes their program so successful. April Porter of Waterford shared details of their Upstart K–3 Summer Learning Path and the key role that parents and families play in engaging young learners in academics and enrichment during the summertime. Porter also highlighted a key concept that many are realizing when it comes to the concept of “kindergarten readiness”: 

“You hear kindergarten ready, kindergarten and kindergarten readiness. I often feel like the conversations sound like all the responsibilities fall on a family to be ready or even on the child to be ready. And I just think, whether as organizations implementing, studying, funding, how do we really shift our perspective and go deeper on what does it mean for districts to be ready? What does it mean for community-based organizations to be ready? I think we need deeper reflection on what it means to be ready for everybody.”