The New York City-based Wallace Foundation has announced grants totaling $2.7 million to help six school districts strengthen their summer learning programs and study the effects of "summer learning loss."
Although typically focused on small populations, multiple studies have found that many students lose knowledge or skills they acquired over the previous school year during the summer months, and that the problem disproportionately affects low-income students.
Awarded as part of the foundation's multiyear, $50 million summer learning initiative, the grants will go to school districts in communities that already operate summer learning programs aimed at reducing summer learning loss, including Boston, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, as well as the Dallas Independent School District, Rochester City School District, and Duval County Public Schools, which includes Jacksonville, Florida.
Districts receiving grants will use the funds to strengthen their summer programs, starting with incoming fourth-graders. Based on evidence gained this summer, researchers from the RAND Corporation will help school leaders identify areas where their summer programs can be improved. In 2013 and 2014, researchers will begin tracking students' progress to see what difference two years of summer learning programs make and how long the effects last.
"It's clear that the conventional school year is insufficient to adequately educate many students in urban districts," said Wallace Foundation president Will Miller. "Research has confirmed summer learning loss's toll on poor children; less is known about solutions — especially about whether participation for several summers can produce lasting benefits. These investments will build our knowledge of whether summer learning programs produce sufficient and cumulative academic gains to make it worthwhile for districts to use them to improve student achievement."
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