The irony of working in the out-of-school time field is that as the school year starts to wind down, summer programs start to shift into high gear. Programs transition from operating approximately 2 to 4 hours a day to providing six to eight hours of services. The premise of the summer loss argues that the academic progress that students made during the previous school year diminishes during the summer break. Even if the student attends summer school, which is usually for remediation not necessarily retention. 

According to P.T. Von Hippel (2019), students will lose approximately two months of what they’ve learned in math learning every summer.  The National Summer Learning Association claims that starting in elementary school low-income students will suffer from summer learning loss which contributes to a noticeable academic performance gap between them and their middle- class peers (NSLA, 2019).

However, according to research conducted by. Megan Kuhfeld who collected data from the 3.4 million students who took the NWEA MAP Growth assessments, determent the students who experienced the greatest loss during the summer, were those who made the greatest gains during the previous school year. Her research indicates that most children, regardless of their learning advantages, tend to learn more slowly during summer vacations compared to the school year. This means that each summer provides an opportunity for children who are lagging to catch up. In other words, even if learning gaps don't widen significantly during summer vacations, these breaks still offer a chance to reduce them (M Kuhfeld, M, 2019). 

The summer break provides after school and summer programs with the opportunity to provide disadvantaged students with resources and activities to reduce summer learning loss. Previous research shows that summer learning programs for disadvantaged children can shrink achievement gaps, especially if students attend them regularly for several years (Trends, C. 2009). A study conducted by Bowers, and Schwarz (2017) revealed that if students from low-SES homes participate in a well-designed summer programs, their participation can result in improved oral and written narrative skills. Unfortunately, poor attendance sometimes dilutes the effectiveness of summer learning programs; therefore, students who attend summer programs regularly get a benefit, but other students do not.

References

Kuhfeld, M. (2019). Surprising new evidence on summer learning loss. Phi Delta Kappan, 101(1), 25-29.

Trends, C. (2009). Effective and promising summer learning programs and approaches for economically disadvantaged children and youth.

Von Hippel, P. T. (2019). Is summer learning loss real?. Education Next, 19(4).