Their teacher engaged them in a call and response: “You can poke it!” she says. “You can?”

“Poke it!” they responded in unison before she added, “and take a little bit of dirt out!”

Down the hall, in a kindergarten classroom, kids spent the morning working on math problems before moving into a purposeful play session focused on fossils.

“I’m working on three plus three equals six … using blocks!” exclaimed one student, Gabriella, who shared that her favorite parts of the day are “snack and recess and lunch.”

Later that afternoon, she and her classmates headed to one of a number of extracurricular activities ranging from martial arts to step dance and soccer.

These students at New Bridges Elementary, a school which sits along a stretch of the Eastern Parkway in the heart of Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, were participating in a partnership between New York City Public Schools and the Department of Youth and Community Development. The program, launched in 2021 in the depths of the pandemic, gives students access to free academic and enrichment programming over the course of six summer weeks — a time when schools have historically been shuttered to all students except those in need of the most concentrated, remedial academic support.

New York City is one of scores of districts across the nation who have worked to transform traditional summer school into a more inclusive, enrichment-filled yet still academically rigorous space. 

Some of these districts began this shift over a decade ago, following the release of a which put forth a case for rebuilding summer learning and highlighted the ways in which this time could be used to fight some of the academic backslide typically seen between June and September, especially for students from low-income backgrounds. 

These efforts were supercharged during the pandemic, when schools were faced with a learning loss crisis and, simultaneously, a seismic funding influx from the $189.5 billion Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, also known as ESSER.

The pandemic, “really lit a fire in everybody to say, ‘We can’t do things the same,’” said Nancy Gannon, senior advisor of Teaching and Learning for U.S. Education at , a nonprofit which built the to help districts and states rethink what can be accomplished during these down months.

“I don’t think people really dug into the potential of summer until these last couple years,” she added. “And now that they see how potent it can be. I don’t know that there’ll be any going back.”

But some districts and states are scrambling to hold onto this new vision of summer with ESSER money sunsetting, the recent freeze — then release —  of the federal dollars that keep many of these programs afloat and a greater uncertainty about the very future of the U.S. Department of Education and all its funding streams.

‘It can be a joyful place’

Kevyn Bowles, the principal of New Bridges Elementary, said he’s witnessed the transformation of summer first hand over the course of his 12 years running the school.

Historically, you were “bringing together the students who had done the most poorly over the course of the school year in eight different schools, and putting them all in a class together,” he said. “So even if you were bringing your most joyful teaching self to it, it still just was a challenging situation.”

Kids didn’t want to be there, he added, and it showed. That changed with the introduction of Summer Rising in 2021. 

“Even from that first summer, it felt more like an opportunity for students,” Bowles said, “versus something that we were forcing just a small number of kids [to do] because they had quote, unquote, failed. … We had enormous demand”

This summer, around 250 elementary school students have signed up to attend Summer Rising at Bowles’ school, and fewer than 30 of them are mandated to be there. 

Each morning, the kids gather in the auditorium at 8 a.m. for Bright Start, a five-minute morning meeting filled with songs, affirmations and high fives. 

“To me that just sets the tone,” said Bowles, “like we’re here together. We’re in this together. It can be a joyful place. It can be a fun day.”

Kids next head to a half-hour block of social-emotional learning through yoga and mindfulness, followed by three-and-a-half hours of concentrated academics, taught by licensed teachers. After lunch and recess, students have their afternoon “specials” — including soccer, martial arts, theater and dance — which wrap up by 6 p.m. each evening.

Bowles said the vast range of enrichment activities they’re uniquely able to offer students over the summer bring a lot of happiness and motivation to the school building. And while attendance in July and August remains a challenge, New Bridges Elementary has seen positive results in math and reading, especially for the youngest students: Kindergarteners through second graders who attended Summer Rising in past years either maintained their skills or grew, whereas their peers who didn’t, slid slightly backwards.

“Summer learning arguably has the greatest impact at the lowest price on the greatest number of students of any policy solutions,” Chris Smith, executive director of , told ����Ӱ��. “And it’s time that we invest in it in a serious way with public funding.”

‘A blank canvas’

For summer learning to be an effective tool to combat learning loss — rather than merely functioning as child care or summer camp — school leaders need to strategically implement research-backed best practices, experts and researchers told ����Ӱ��.

From 2011-16 a group of RAND researchers , free and district-led summer learning programs for low-income elementary students in five urban school districts: Boston, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Duval County, Florida and Rochester, New York.

They found it was important to pair strong teachers with rigorous academic curriculum and high-quality enrichment experiences. Other recommendations include:

• Programs should run for five to six weeks with three to four hours a day of concentrated academics, including 90 or more minutes of math and 120 or more minutes of English Language Arts.

• Small class sizes, capped at 15 students per adult

• A clear attendance policy and incentives for showing up

• Recruitment and hiring of the district’s most highly effective teachers

• Curriculum anchored in school-year standards and student needs

• Early planning led by a program director who dedicates at least half of their time to this work, beginning in January

After two consecutive summers, students who attended one of these programs for 20 or more days outperformed their peers in math and ELA and displayed stronger social-emotional competencies, the Rand researchers found.

The pandemic provided a perfect opportunity for districts across the country to implement some of these practices, both because students had a heightened need of academic and social-emotional support and because of the unprecedented sum of federal rescue funds that were poured into schools. One-fifth was allocated to with 1% specifically earmarked for summer learning.

Because the money was distributed through states — rather than districts — this also invited them into the conversation, when historically summer programming had been locally driven by schools or other organizations. And this unique moment provided fertile ground for more research, according to Allison Crean Davis, the chief research officer at , who also directed a three-part funded by the Wallace Foundation.

“Never had we seen this natural experiment where it’s like, ‘We’re going to give 1% of these large funds to states to then tee up summer learning … all across the country [and] give some of that money to districts to actually do it,’” she said. “So it just felt like it would be a real missed opportunity not to say, ‘What does this end up looking like? How do states respond?’”

She and her team found that 94% of the local education agencies they studied offered some kind of summer programming in 2021. Of those that did, all implemented academic programming, 59% were traditional “credit recovery” programs aimed at students who had failed and 57% supplemented academic programs with social-emotional learning.

RAND also expanded on its earlier during the pandemic and found that 81% of schools nationwide offered summer programs in 2023, yet districts’ largest summer programs typically enrolled less than half of eligible students and less than 1 in 5 of the largest elementary programs met the minimum recommended hours of academic instruction. 

Despite some of these ongoing trials and errors, summer remains an exciting space for innovation and collaboration, said Julie Fitz, a researcher at the .

“Summer is just an interesting space where you have a little bit of a blank canvas, and states were getting really creative with thinking about how to design that space,” she said.

It also became an area of rare bipartisanship, she added. “It’s just been so refreshing to see people coming together around kids and putting the needs of kids and families first.”

‘Little shy about investing in summer right now’

This is the first summer since the pandemic that most states are navigating summer school without COVID relief funds — and with increased uncertainty about federal education spending more broadly.

While the hope initially was that districts and states would find ways to sustain programming after that fiscal cliff, many remain concerned that even basic “foundational funding” needed to educate students might disappear, Davis said.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if people are a little shy about investing in summer right now,” she said.

This tension became especially apparent on June 30, when the Trump administration announced it would withhold almost $7 billion in previously allocated money, including $1.3 billion for the , which districts rely on to run afterschool and summer programming. The news came one day before schools were meant to receive the money.

“This type of uncertainty — where they thought they were going to have it, and then all of the sudden we’re told the day before they expected to be given it, to no longer have it — is unprecedented,” said Tara Thomas, government affairs manager at

The move disproportionately harmed smaller districts and those serving larger populations of students from low-income families, “because they didn’t have money to float these services while they wait to figure out if the federal government is going to give them the money that they were promised,” Thomas said.

Following widespread, bipartisan pushback, the Office of Management and Budget said on July 18 that the $1.3 billion for afterschool and summer programs, although filed by two dozen states after the sudden freeze alleged critical academic and extracurricular programs had already been “irreparably harmed.”

Despite these hurdles, researchers and district leaders remain excited about where summer learning is headed.

“I think it’s really encouraging and there’s a lot of vision about how summer can be an important tool in the state toolbox in terms of improving educational outcomes and other social focus areas,” said the Learning Policy Institute’s Fitz. “I think it’s really an optimistic area right now.”

“Guam doesn’t have a lot of STEM opportunities at all,” Kim said. “Even at the University of Guam, it’s so small that we barely have any basic laboratory [equipment], like what other universities would have.”

When the 17-year-old student learned of a highly competitive U.S. summer science program, she applied. Little did she know that she would not only be accepted, but flown to the small, rural town of Chadron, nestled in the sandhills of western Nebraska.

In June, Kim began the biochemistry program at , a nonprofit that has offered residential summer STEM research opportunities to teenagers since 1959. She and 35 other rising seniors spent five weeks at Chadron State College, conducting research with professors and graduate students to help prevent fungal infection of agricultural crops.

The college is one of 14 universities across the nation that housed 600 students this summer to tackle research projects in fields like astrophysics and cell biology. Chadron State — a school of roughly 2,000 students — joined the organization’s list of partners this year to expand the biochemistry program, which also takes place at Purdue and Indiana universities. 

Rachel Avard, a biology professor at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, worked with SSP International students at Purdue University last year. This summer, she came to Chadron for the same reason: to help aspiring scientists gain key STEM skills, along with personal growth and preparation for college.

“For many of them, this is the first time in their lives that they haven’t been ‘the best’ immediately walking in the door,” she said. “We’re really able to hold their hand through the process of learning how to grow these skills and how to work in a team, how to adjust to failure, how to work through all these challenges.”

The three colleges in SSP International’s biochemistry program are working on the . When the last session ends, students will have designed a molecule that could inhibit enzyme activity and prevent fungal infection of crops. It’s a task that SSP International students have been working on for a few years, Avard said. The organization is collecting participants’ research results that can hopefully be used to help create a drug to protect crops in the future.

“Fungal pathogens are killing sometimes … up to 50% or 60% of crops every year. And we have all these pesticides and fungicides, but they’re all extremely toxic,” she said. “So the goal for this project is to develop a drug that is going to kill fungi.”

The workload includes 60-hour weeks in the college’s science and math wing. Days are filled with in-depth classroom lectures and team discussions before students pull on latex gloves to conduct experiments in the lab.

Everyone gets one-hour breaks for rest or meals, but the students often end up in the lab after sunset or during personal time on weekends. Dinners are always business casual and include professional networking opportunities with guest speakers. Avard and other faculty also take the students on field trips or host games in the evenings to help them work as a team. 

The rigor of the summer science program was a surprise for many, including Kim.

“I didn’t know it’d be this intense. The first three days, I would say, were the most intense of my life — like exam season — but it makes me feel productive, and I think that’s what’s really important,” she said. “And good results are going to come out soon. Science is exciting. You don’t know what’s going to happen. So it keeps us on all of our toes and wanting to do our best.”

Researchers have found that high-quality academic preparation and exposure to STEM is a in high schoolers’ chances of landing a STEM career. In a 2023 , 75% of Gen Z youth said they were interested in STEM occupations but only 29% listed a STEM role as their first career choice.

A 2021 Purdue University study on SSP International’s summer science program found that “engaging in authentic research as a high school student has the ability to in STEM.”

“The thought is not just that we are trying to teach science to some students, but we wanted to give students a transformational experience at a pivotal time in their life,” said Amy Belote, the organization’s vice president of program operations. “When they’re leaving the summer science program, they’re getting ready to start their senior year of high school — thinking about their future, what they envision for themselves. We’re giving them some hands-on experience before they start making all of those plans.”

The program accepts only about 15% of applicants, Belote said, and tries to balance the number of males and females in each cohort. In Chadron, the group consists of 18 girls and 18 boys. 

The program comes with a hefty price tag: $9,800. Nearly half of participants last year received financial aid, and about a third were able to go for free. Students can also receive spending money and $3,000 stipends to replace wages they would have earned during the summer if they were at home.

Avard said these facets of the program allow students of a variety of backgrounds to experience something that can change their life trajectory. Witnessing each student’s personal growth — secluded on a college campus with a small group of people for five weeks, working long hours — is her favorite part.

“On day one, they’re not making eye contact. They’re very shy. They’re all very unsure,” she said. “They’ve never really been alone or without parental supervision all day, every day. And so the growth that we see in just even the first couple weeks is phenomenal.”

This summer was Aiden Fee’s first time visiting the Midwest. A 16-year-old from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he said he learned to love the open landscape and friendly people in town. He also became more comfortable with meeting new people in unfamiliar settings.

“I’ve learned a lot more about teamwork and asking questions,” Fee said. “A lot of the students here are some of the highest-achieving at their school. Whenever you have so many people like that, it’s about not being a leader, but relying on other people.”

Kim said she’s looking forward to using the organization’s alumni network, which provides group and one-on-one mentoring for recent participants as they transition from high school to college. 

“These [past] weeks will be the most intense and challenging time of my life. But it’s been so eye-opening. I’ve met so many people from different cultures, and I just can’t wait for the future, because we all aspire to be some type of scientist,” she said. “So I can’t wait to see where this program leads us.”

Out-of-school programs — enrichment programs that occur after school or during the summer — offer structured environments where students engage in meaningful activities, build relationships and develop essential life skills. They often serve as a bridge between school, home and the community, and for kids from low-income families, high-quality out-of-school programs can play an outsized role in their development.

“This idea that society should put all development and learning into this institution called school is problematic. In today’s world it doesn’t make sense,” says Tom Akiva, professor at the University of Pittsburgh whose research focuses on out-of-school learning. “The school setting has many of the standard areas we think of as learning: science, math, reading. But a lot of important learning happens in out-of-school time. Things like social skills, leadership, and a lot of interest development.”

A from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine examines the impact and effectiveness of these programs, offering the major take-away that they’re far more important than policymakers and parents likely realize. Yet gaps in access, funding limitations in the current political climate and workforce challenges hinder their potential impact.

“Eighty percent of waking hours are spent in informal learning, or out-of-school learning,” says Akiva, who helped author the report. “From a developmental psychology perspective, you’re learning in every environment you’re in. So lots of really important life learning happens outside.”

The 347-page report is the first comprehensive examination of out-of-school programs in more than two decades, and comes at a moment when the ecosystem is more diverse in its offerings than ever. These range from play-based experiences for younger students that boost social skills, imagination and creativity — and operate more like child care than anything — to more specialized experiences for older students, like a chess club, karate program or pottery class. Sports and theater programs offer important opportunities for team-building, while academic enrichment programs can help students who are behind catch up.

that well-designed, high-quality programs enhance academic motivation and increase school attendance, effectively promoting long-term educational success. And while it’s no wonder that tens of millions of families are eager to enroll their children, many are locked out.  

In 2020, 24.6 million children wanted to enroll in out-of-school programs but ran headfirst into roadblocks such as high costs and transportation challenges, the latest available data show. A whopping 11 million children from low-income families were unable to participate in out-of-school programs, perhaps unsurprisingly suggesting barriers to access are not evenly distributed.

“For a lot of kids from affluent backgrounds, it’s kind of just an understood opportunity,” says Deborah Moroney, vice president of American Institutes for Research and chair of the National Academies committee that oversaw the research and production of the report. “But there’s a real opportunity gap for young people who come from marginalized communities and identities in terms of inclusion. There is a supply of out-of-school time opportunities that are subsidized or offered at a reduced cost, but it is not meeting the demand for the young people who can’t otherwise pay.”

Much of that is due to a fractured funding system, which has improved and grown significantly compared to two decades ago, but remains poorly coordinated and unreliable and has not kept pace with the growth in demand. The report goes so far as to call the existence of out-of-school programs “precarious,” noting that they exist “at the whim of one foundation board meeting or election.”

“The field has evolved, the funding has increased and things have formalized in terms of quality and experiences that participants have access to, but it’s still not meeting the demand,” Moroney says. “Funding stability still isn’t there, and that’s causing major problems for the organizers.” 

As it stands, the main federal funding stream for out-of-school programs is the $1.3 billion 21st Century Community Learning Centers grants — though it’s unclear whether that funding will exist in the coming years as the Trump administration pursues funding cuts and consolidating existing programs into flexible block grants. Other than California’s long-standing matching grant to fund programs for its residents, only a handful of other states invest significantly, including Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Underscoring just how fragile many of these programs are, the U.S. Education Department’s decision to halt pandemic aid reimbursement extensions is already hitting summer and afterschool programs. The Maryland Out of School Time Network estimates that Baltimore will lose roughly 12,000 seats for summer opportunities this year as a result.

The report recommends that the out-of-school programs be coordinated centrally and woven into the nation’s safety net, instead of its piecemeal state of affairs — a proposal that seems unlikely given the current fiscal environment. 

To be sure, the financing of the system is also tethered to the competency and quality of the workforce, which, much like the child care sector, is beset by a host of challenges: low wages, high turnover, job-related stress and no real cohesion or organization of the profession.

“This is a workforce that historically has come from the communities in which they’re serving,” says Moroney. “They have a great passion for the work, but it’s an unrecognized workforce. They are, traditionally, a low-wage workforce. They want to stay in the field, but there’s not the same kind of career pipelines and trajectories that there might be in some other fields.” 

Given that the workforce plays an outsized role in the effective operation of out-of-school programs, Moroney says that it’s imperative for states and districts to figure out ways to elevate it, including how to recruit and retain workers. The report concludes that professional development, competitive salaries and career pathways can enhance workforce stability and improve program quality — though, again, policy experts say it’s difficult in the current fiscal environment, to imagine a scenario where those are priorities. 

“I think if we were to invest in the workforce, we would see changes throughout the education ecosystem,” agrees Akiva. “If we figure out how to support this workforce better — because they’re really doing important, invisible work in society — then I think we would see positive change radiating out.”

Year-round schooling, which gained popularity in the 1970s, avoids long summer vacations in which students can during the school year. Under the plan, students attend classes as part of a normal grading period most of the summer. Their school years aren’t much longer than with a traditional schedule, just spread out differently, with their lost summer vacation days added to other breaks during the school year.

Cleveland’s move comes as some states like South Carolina and Florida have recently embraced or are trying out the approach, along with districts hoping to address pandemic learning loss. The number of schools using year-round schedules nationally fell from about 6% in the 1970s to under 3% before the pandemic, researchers report.

In Cleveland, previous district leaders once considered year-round school a promising way to turn around the struggling district. But it caught on in just six of Cleveland’s high schools, and new school leaders now want all district schools on the same calendar and curriculum so students aren’t lost if they change schools.

Leaders also aren’t convinced year-round school is helping. Athis year with researchers from Cleveland State University and the American Institutes for Research showed the city’s year-round schools often have higher math and English scores than other high schools, but mostly because the schools have more gifted students and students who would do well with any schedule. Research nationally is also mixed.

District CEO Warren Morgan decided gains were not enough to justify the additional $2.6 million in teacher salaries year-round classes cost.

“There was no evidence that there was substantial, meaningful difference in the academic outcomes in our different calendar types,” Morgan said before the school board vote last week. “We also recognize and value the excellence of our many different schools …but there’s also other variables…that make them great.”

David Hornak, executive director of the National Association for Year Round Education, said the pandemic renewed interest in year-round school as a possible way to tackle COVID learning loss, as well as increasing interest in related strategies, like adding summer learning programs or extra school days to the start or end of the school year.

Hornak estimates about 4% of schools now have a year-round schedule, but the association has scaled back over the years and has no staff to track it.

He said students are less likely to forget lessons over a shorter summer vacation. Longer breaks during the year, often about three weeks long, give schools a chance to give struggling students targeted help catching up, rather than waiting until July for a summer school that feels like a punishment.

“I would love school leaders to consider summer as just another academic block of time,” he said.

Paul Von Hippel, a professor of public affairs at the University of Texas and prominent skeptic of year-round school, said he sees no difference in learning from just scheduling the same number of school days in different ways.

“Instead of having one long break where students forget a lot, you have a bunch of short breaks where students forget a little,” Von Hippel said. “The amount of forgetting adds up to be about the same.”

He added that though the pandemic prompted districts to consider year-round classes, he sees no evidence that they have caught on in a meaningful way. 

Teachers, parents and students of Cleveland’s six year-round schools, however, fought the district CEO and implored the district school board at two hearings to keep a schedule they say made their schools unique and offered students chances they wouldn’t have with a standard school year.

Students from one year-round school even protested the change outside district headquarters last month.

Xavier Avery, a junior at Davis Aerospace and Maritime High School who organized the protest, reminded the school board right before its vote April 29 that his school has received state awards and has better test scores than the district average. He also said that students spend part of school days in warmer months on boats and planes, both learning to operate them and studying Lake Erie as part of the school’s specialized focus.

“Our year-round calendar plays a huge role in this success,” he said. “It’s what makes our programs, internships and hands-on learning possible.”

Cleveland also cut other non-traditional schedules as part of its push to put all schools on the same schedule. Morgan and the school board also axed extended school years, which added extra days at 17 other schools, as well as extended days, running 30 minutes longer each day at six schools. Those cuts drew more fire from parents, who said that being able to choose schools that offer extra time keeps them in the district, rather than selling their homes and moving to suburban districts.

Year-round schools started gaining national attention in the 1970s, experts say, for two major reasons. In some cases, most notably fast-growing California where schools were too small to handle exploding enrollment, schools spread classes out over the whole year so they could stagger student schedules to accommodate all of them.

The other major draw, the one that appealed to Cleveland, was limiting “summer learning loss” or “summer slide,” where students forget much of what they learned during long vacations. 

A found mixed results, with Black, Hispanic and low-income students more likely to see gains and the staggered schedules in California more likely to show losses.

California stopped using that strategy after building new schools for all its students. 

The total also fell as cities like and dropped the approach several years ago after not seeing big academic gains. Post-pandemic data was not readily available.

Educators still see promise in the approach. and three school districts in Florida are now  

Other school districts in Dallas and Philadelphia are trying a related, though different, approach: simply adding voluntary days to the year to reduce summer slide and to help students who are behind catch up, whether from the pandemic or just needing more class time. Richmond, Virginia, has also added at a few struggling schools, though squashed attempts to do that for the whole district.

Cleveland’s experiment with year-round school started in 2009 at a specialized STEM school created as a magnet for the city’s top students. Former Cleveland school district CEO Eric Gordon soon after considered moving the entire district to year-round schedules. 

In launching a district turnaround plan in 2012, he jokingly dismissed the traditional school year as an “agrarian calendar we currently use so that all of my students are free to bring in the harvest every summer.”

Gordon said the district could close half the gap between his students and higher-performing suburban students by eliminating the accumulation of 12 years of summer slides before graduation. 

But attempts to use a year-round calendar at one large neighborhood high school failed after parents objected to students losing summer breaks and its effect on family vacations, summer jobs and school schedules of siblings on regular schedules.

A lack of air conditioning in some old schools and parent objections to a much-smaller change — starting the school year earlier in August than before — put plans to use the schedule at more schools on hold.

The year-round schedule ended up at no neighborhood schools and just six schools the district created with alternative class styles — a school based in a hospital or one focused on learning through digital art projects — that families could pick, but not be assigned to.

Through a unique collaboration between the and , the community now ranks 12th in state literacy, up from 31st just four years ago. This dramatic improvement wasn’t magic — it was the result of a systematic, community-wide approach to literacy that could serve as a model for districts nationwide.

The key to our success? A comprehensive public-private partnership that treats literacy as a community mission rather than just a school district initiative. The Learning Alliance, a nonprofit based in Vero Beach, has created an integrated support system that extends from birth through elementary school and beyond.

Its partnership with the school district works because it addresses literacy from multiple angles all in service of one goal — 90% of students reading on grade level by the end of third grade. 

To achieve this goal, the alliance funds 25 literacy coaches and reading interventionist positions within the district, ensuring that every school has dedicated expertise to implement the science of reading in grades K through 3. The district provides similar support in older grades. 

But that’s not all. The nonprofit engages families with children from birth to age 5, providing more than 5,500 age-appropriate books and 1,700 learning kits annually to under-resourced families. It also supports robust after-school and summer tutoring programs through the Moonshot Academy, where students show 50% more growth in reading compared to their peers not in the program. The afterschool program runs in the district schools, largely with district teachers compensated for their extra work by the Alliance.

The results speak for themselves. Indian River has doubled the percentage of A- and B-rated schools from 47% to 95%, and our third-grade reading scores now outperform the state average by nine percentage points (64% versus 55%). These aren’t just statistics — they represent thousands of children who now have the foundational skills they need to succeed in school and life.

Critical to this success has been the Moonshot Community Action Network, a coalition of over 150 local leaders who ensure that early literacy remains a community priority. This network includes business leaders, healthcare providers, faith-based organizations, and community advocates who understand that literacy is fundamental to our community’s future prosperity.

For superintendents and district leaders reading this, we offer several practical recommendations:

• First, look beyond traditional funding models. While public education funding is essential, strategic partnerships with community organizations can provide both financial resources and expertise that complement district capabilities.

• Second, invest in literacy coaches and reading interventionists. Having dedicated literacy experts in every school creates a support system for teachers and ensures consistent implementation of evidence-based reading instruction.

• Third, extend your teaching time. Our Moonshot Academy afterschool program creates opportunities for students to make more progress in less time. It pairs intensive tutoring with enrichment activities to boost engagement, and it works: students in the afterschool program average at least 50% more growth in reading than peers who do not participate.��

• Fourth, expand your reach beyond school walls. The family partnerships program demonstrates that literacy support must begin before kindergarten and continue outside school hours to be truly effective.

• Fifth, build community coalitions. The broader community’s investment in literacy creates a sustainable ecosystem of support that survives changes in school leadership or funding fluctuations.

For philanthropists and community organizations, think beyond traditional grant-making. The most effective partnerships involve deep collaboration with schools, shared accountability for outcomes, and a long-term commitment to the community.

Our journey hasn’t been without challenges, but it’s proven that significant improvements in literacy are possible with the right partnership model. The students’ success isn’t just about test scores – it’s about creating a foundation for lifelong learning and opportunity.

The pandemic may have created unprecedented challenges for education, but it has also shown us the power of community collaboration. In Indian River County, we’ve demonstrated that when schools and community organizations work together with shared purpose and accountability, we can achieve remarkable results.

The question isn’t whether this model can work. The question is: Who will be next to replicate it?

That bothered Jacqueline Kronk, CEO of the clubs in St. Joseph County, so she leapt at a chance to add students this summer as part of statewide expansion of a promising Indianapolis effort.

Started in 2021 to help students catch up after the pandemic, the Indy Summer Learning Labs will receive more than $5 million from Indiana to expand into the Gary and South Bend areas, along with more rural Salem and Wabash. The five-week mix of academic work and fun activities for first through ninth graders has grown each year and is credited by the state with giving students strong gains in both math and English. 

The “Expanding What Works” grants let Kronk grow her program from 1,500 students last year to 2,500 in five counties around South Bend. She has also hired more teachers from local schools and upgraded the program’s curriculum.

“We’d be foolish to not address the fact that COVID and the implications of that are still here and rampant amongst our young students…and their ability to learn and thrive,” Kronk said. “We should be really, really scared about that reality and realize that we need to be throwing all but the kitchen sink at this issue.”

The nonprofit The Mind Trust and the United Way of Central Indiana created the Indy Learning Labs in 2021 for 3,000 students at 35 sites around the city, allowing students a chance to catch up on lost school time. The labs also offer field trips and other activities students in more affluent students can afford.

The labs have grown each year and The Mind Trust expects to have up to 5,500 students at 49 sites in the city — schools, churches, youth centers, or nonprofits — this summer. Though there are no income limits, nearly 90 percent of children qualify for free or reduced school lunches, a common measure of low family income, allowing the labs to reach families eight times less likely to enroll in summer programs than affluent ones.

Summer programs like the labs have been a widespread strategy for cities and school districts to catch students up after the pandemic. A found more than 70 percent of school districts have added or expanded summer programs since the pandemic, making them the most common use of federal COVID relief dollars.

Results are usually low on math and reading gains, but a new study this week found large gains last year from the Summer Boost program funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies in eight cities, including Indianapolis.

Researchers have found the small reading and math improvements in summer programs are often because programs don’t offer enough academic work.

Results from both the Bloomberg study and last summer’s Learning Labs are more promising because the programs offered more academic work — about three hours a day devoted to math and English instruction.

Bloomberg based Boost on the Indy Summer Learning Labs and sponsored the labs last summer. The study did not include any lab programs.

The Bloomberg study found 22 days of summer learning helped students make, on average, three to four weeks of reading gains and about four to five weeks in math gains.

That let students make up 22 percent of COVID losses in reading and 31 percent of math, researchers estimated.

The Learning Labs had previously released data from tests given to students at the start and end of the program. Last year, those tests showed proficiency rates in both math and English increased more than 20 percent during the program.

Organizers credit time spent on learning, hiring teachers from local schools to teach some of the sessions and using a curriculum carefully chosen to align with state learning standards for the gains.

Those results, along with the ability to add more students and upgrade the curriculum were all appealing in South Bend, Kronk said.

“The impact that we saw that it had down in Indianapolis for the last several years and for us to be able to scale and replicate that and bring that to counties that we’re serving up here…that really excited us,” she said.

Indianapolis parent Chavana Oliver said the labs were a huge help last year for her son Leanno, 7, who was about to enter first grade but has issues with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and needed extra help.

“He saw a lot of improvement,” Oliver said. She signed him up again this year, as well as her older son Kaden, 8. “ Now he’s very excited, because it will help even more for the second grade.”

Deborah Hendricks Black, a former teacher who helped the Urban League and others apply for the state grant to bring the labs to Gary, said the test score gains and reports from parents in Indianapolis like Oliver caught her eye. The grants will allow 750 students from high-poverty Gary and surrounding communities including East Chicago to avoid summer learning loss and catch up when behind.

“Now we’ll have a chance to at least affect a small amount of students,” she said. “But we know they will be supported effectively with a proven curriculum that provides gains in a short amount of time and we’re looking forward to that.”

Cassandra Summers-Corp, executive director of the Creating Avenues for Student Transformation (CAST) nonprofit in Salem said her rural area about 100 miles south of Indianapolis has a lack of tutors to help students who have fallen behind. Her organization has offered summer programs focused on reading lessons to about 40 students in surrounding counties the last few years. The new grant will let her add math classes and grow to 75 students, along with increasing from three days a week to five.

“We really wanted a partner to help us to expand,” Summers said. “Even though a lot of COVID learning loss money is sunsetting, we know that the crisis of COVID learning loss is not over.”

Disclosure: The Mind Trust provides financial support to ����Ӱ��.

So Early Learning Nation asked leaders and experts, “How can parents and caregivers make this a playful learning summer?” Here are their responses.

“Summer offers a more relaxed time for children to use their imaginations and get creative with whatever materials may be found around the home or in surrounding outdoor spaces: cushions and cloths, for example, can be used to build forts or to dress up; natural materials found outside, like sticks and pebbles, can be used to construct designs, practice number awareness and one-to-one correspondence. We encourage caregivers to offer these open-ended, no-cost, playful opportunities to children, allowing their imaginations to lead the way in play that bolsters language, mathematical and socio-emotional development!”

—Molly Scott, associate director of ; and Cynthia A. Wiltshire, assistant professor of early childhood education, and director of the

“‘The best teacher in the world,’ said Fred Rogers, ‘is the one who loves what he or she does, and just loves it in front of you.’ How can parents and caregivers make this a playful summer? By loving what they love — whether it’s painting or playing the guitar — and bringing their kids along for the fun.”

—Gregg Behr, coauthor of “When You Wonder, You’re Learning: Mister Rogers’ Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids”

“My view right now is that we have to start working on adults. Find one thing today that’s playful and see how it makes you feel. Skip to the next place you’re going. What would it be like if you took one minute to notice what’s on the sidewalk rather than walking so fast that you don’t even notice it?”

—, professor of psychology, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and coauthor of “”

“Turn off the phones, the screens and the noise from the world. And dive into the world of imagination and play with your child! Who knows, you may end up taking a ride into outer space in a rocket ship made out of cardboard, or turn into a dragon breathing fire on a castle. Your child and you will learn alongside each other, not just about the world but about each other, and what a beautiful moment that will be!”

—Binal Patel, chief program officer of

“Take some time to observe and ask children what they find enjoyable, while also thinking about what you find enjoyable. What can bring joy to the whole family, as children find joy in experiencing things with loved ones? Opportunities where children get to have agency and direct the activities, whether it is picking the song to sing or dance to master, book themes to read, place(s) to visit, which hill to climb and so much more would spark fun and joy. Finally, finding time for rest and being silly makes for a joyful summer.”

—Iheoma U. Iruka,

“We encourage families and caregivers to gather a collection of loose parts to create, tell stories, problem-solve and innovate. Tap into the interests and imagination of a child. For example, a simple paper towel roll can become a telescope for a fun game of Eye Spy; and then become a rocket ship where stories are told about travels in outer space; or a tunnel for a marble run they have created. The possibilities are endless!”

—Nadia Kenisha Bynoe and Angelique Thompson, authors of “”

“This summer, embrace outdoor play and nature as a vehicle for learning, whether that’s a trip to a local playground, a box of sidewalk chalk or a playful walk in the sunshine. Parents and caregivers can also raise their voices and advocate for equitable play spaces in their community so every kid can get the benefits of playful learning.”

—Lysa Ratliff, CEO of

“Embrace every day by bringing your children outside to play. Invite your neighbors to play. Step back and let the children take the lead; only assist with access to balls, books, dress-up clothes, sidewalk chalk, water, etc. and watch the magic of play.

—Pat Rumbaugh, founder of

“Parents and caregivers should find ways for themselves to play, both with their children, but also on their own. Play begets play.”

—Peter Wardrip, assistant professor of STEAM education, University of Wisconsin

“Play is an evolutionary strategy that strengthens our capacity to simultaneously experience joy, uncertainty and connection.  Listen to the laughter around you: Set down your phone and play!”

—Matt Karlsen,

“Play is a joyful constant in children’s lives. It is how they connect, grow and learn. This summer, embrace all these possibilities by giving children the time and space to play freely alone and with others, including you. Parents are important and valued play partners so play with children by following their lead when they jump in puddles and join their imaginary scenarios as they transform into pirates searching for buried treasure. But also invite them into playful activities that allow them to experiment and learn things like how to make paper airplanes that can fly long distances, building bridges that connect two pieces of furniture or building a fort big enough to snuggle in and read books together.”

—Angela Pyle, Ph.D., director of University of Toronto

A philanthropic initiative launched in 2022 to get students back on track from COVID learning loss is returning promising results, a new study suggests: just four weeks spent in the program last year helped students regain nearly one-fourth of their reading skills and one-third of math skills, compared to students who didn’t participate in the program.

The initiative, underwritten by and other funders, serves charter school students about to enter grades 1 through 9.  

Researchers at Arizona State University examined over 35,000 Summer Boost students in eight cities, finding that in just 22 days of programming, on average, students saw about three to four weeks of reading progress and about four to five weeks in math. In reading, that works out to making up about 22% of COVID learning losses; in math, it’s about 31%.

While students across all demographic groups got a boost, English Language Learners saw the strongest growth, achieving about seven to eight weeks worth of learning in just over four weeks. Researchers said students moving into grades 4-8 saw particularly accelerated growth.  

Students took part in the study in Baltimore, Birmingham, Indianapolis, Memphis, Nashville, New York City, San Antonio and Washington, D.C. 

Schools participating in Summer Boost are free to use either a provided curriculum or a high-quality one of their choice, but researchers found that about a third of schools used a “balanced kind of curricular approach” that reserved time for both academics and engaging enrichment activities, said ASU’s Geoffrey Borman, who led the research.

Schools that struck that balance, he said, had “the most positive impacts for kids.” 

In summer school more broadly, Borman noted, the biggest challenges are getting kids to show up and stay engaged across the summer — and attracting high-quality teachers at a time when “both teachers and kids would probably rather be on summer break.”

To that end, schools in the program are encouraged to use as much of their budget as possible to pay teachers, said Sunny Larson, K-12 Education Program Lead at Bloomberg. The incentive, she added, “really got those veteran educators back into the classroom.”

Many prioritized hiring teachers who had already worked with these students during the school year. That allowed a continuity “that I also think was beneficial,” said Borman. 

Previous research suggests that pandemic recovery has essentially stalled for most students, with many needing the equivalent of about four more months in school to catch up to pre-pandemic levels. Ninth-graders need a full year of extra school to catch up, according to 2023 findings from the assessment provider NWEA.

Morgan Polikoff, a professor of education at the University of Southern California, said the findings were promising, but that he’d like to know whether the effects persist throughout the school year.

“While I think many have the perception that summer school is rarely effective, these results show that well designed summer programs can indeed be a helpful tool to help catch children up or accelerate their growth,” he said. The results suggest the impact of Summer Boost is “very promising — on par with regular school-year learning rates.”

‘Effective guardrails’ in place

The program includes at least 90 minutes each of English Language Arts and math instruction daily with a 25:1 student-teacher ratio. Summer programs must maintain an average daily attendance rate of 70% to get full funding — “effective guardrails” that ensure high quality, Borman said.

While they have flexibility in how they recruit, they’re encouraged to seek out students who can most benefit. 

Summer Boost originated in 2022, when Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, likened stalled academic progress from the pandemic to “the educational equivalent of long COVID.”

“Summer is the most underused — and unequal — time of year educationally,” said Harvard University researcher Thomas Kane, who served as an adviser to the research. “With so many students far behind, I hope this study inspires more school districts to expand their summer learning options.”

Kane noted that to expand the school year beyond 180 days incentivizes districts “to replace what students lost during the pandemic, which was instructional time.” 

Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates, whose helped gauge the program’s effectiveness, said she was glad to see its positive impact. 

“There is real urgency to use summer programs to provide specific, personalized support for struggling students so that they can return to school ready for grade-level work,” she said. “Assessing students relative to grade level standards is the most accurate way to understand where they are and what support they need.”

Huff noted that Curriculum Associates will soon release research showing student academic growth “still has a way to go” to recover to pre-pandemic levels, especially for the youngest students. “The Summer Boost program results underscore this, and show that when given the right supports, students can accelerate their learning.”

In the new ASU study, researchers noted a few caveats. For instance, they admitted that the findings are based on only one year of data and can’t provide evidence of impact over time. It’s possible, they said, that the findings may change as more years of data are added and the sample size increases. 

They also noted that many student records in the sample were incomplete, missing either math or reading pre- or post-test scores.   

Also missing: key student demographic data, meaning that researchers couldn’t analyze all of the students’ scores in relation to indicators such as race, gender and socioeconomic status. And the data don’t include how students ended up in the program, limiting researchers’ ability to compare it to other types of summer learning programs that may have different enrollment requirements. 

But Borman noted that research on such large groups rarely yields such strong results, “And the fact that these outcomes are seen pretty consistently across thousands of kids and multiple cities, I think that lends even more power to these results.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Michael Bloomberg’s party affiliation when he ran for president in 2020.

When it comes to summer learning, the benefits are well documented. Students who consistently attend achieve higher scores on math and language arts testing. They also earn higher ratings from teachers on their social and emotional skills, research shows. Unfortunately, research also shows that students from low-income and minority backgrounds are – and benefit from – summer learning programs than their affluent and white peers.

Programs that add hours and support to the school day, are especially critical for low-income students who were set back the most during the pandemic, according to the report, “The Expanded Classroom.” Those students’ families can’t pay for tutoring, museum visits, and arts activities that more affluent families can.

“The classroom has been the primary venue for helping students learn, build relationships, and develop skills for the workforce,” according to the report. “But in the current era, such activities must transcend the classroom to help kids fully recover from learning loss, close longstanding achievement gaps, and prepare students for 21st-century careers.”

Only one quarter of Indiana students are able to attend these programs, the report found, but many more should be added, not reduced, as will happen if money runs out in the next two years. 

“Effort must be sustained over years—not months—to make up for the lost time of the pandemic and to begin to chip away at a decades-old gap in educational outcomes between high- and low-income students,” states the report, a joint project of the United Way of Central Indiana, the Boys and Girls Clubs serving South Bend and Indianapolis, and nonprofit education advocacy groups The Mind Trust and Indiana Afterschool Network.

Since the start of the pandemic, the state has devoted $35 million of federal COVID relief money to out-of-school learning, plus another $185 million in state money. The federal money runs out next fall and the state money runs out in the summer of 2025.

Mind Trust officials said they hope the report rallies support for out-of-school learning with legislators ahead of the 2025-2027 state budget debate. The report doesn’t ask for a specific amount of money or for money for any particular program, just for understanding the importance of learning outside of the school day.

“It’s really to make sure that our state leaders, legislators and others are thinking about the out-of-school time programs in Indiana as an important part of the ecosystem, and not as something that is just a time-limited program that’s about COVID recovery, and nothing else,” said Mind Trust chief strategy officer Kristin Grimme.

State Rep. Bob Behning, chairman of the House Education Committee, said there’s support for programs outside of the school day in the Legislature. But he cautioned there will be competition for money in the next budget.

“I would predict it’s going to be tight, tighter than we’ve had the last couple of budget cycles,” Behning said. “So you’re going to have to really define not just the need, but that there are gains. Once you can define the academic gains. I think that there would be more interest.”

Grimme agreed and said programs need to be evaluated and money should go to those that were the most successful. Some programs have evaluations pending while others have emerging data on their academic impact that should be reviewed next year.

Adding academic gains is extra important because Indiana’s recovery from the pandemic has “stalled,” the report contends. Though state test scores have improved since 2021, reading proficiency rates fell slightly between 2022 and 2023 while other gains were small.

 Indiana also saw college enrollment drop from 65 percent of graduating high school seniors before the pandemic to 53 percent in 2020–21.

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The report highlights the Indy Summer Learning Labs the Mind Trust and United Way have organized in Indianapolis using state money the last three years. That five-week program serving more than 5,000 students in 43 different sites around the city shows double-digit gains in proficiency rates in the tests students take at the start of the program and at the end.

Last summer, the labs saw 23 percentage point increases in students scoring at grade level or above in English and 22 percentage points in math.

The state will soon take applications from organizations around the state to expand that summer program to other cities, though money set aside for them ends in 2025.

Indiana Learns, another program that gives $1,000 grants to low-income parents to spend on tutoring or afterschool programs for their children, is being evaluated now to see if it needs changes. With more than 10,000 students using more than 100 different tutoring providers, Grimme said, it’s hard to know if Indiana Learns is reaching the right students and if they are getting what they need.

“I do think it’s something that we launched quickly to try to support students and families across the state,” Grimme said. “Is it the version of the program that the state should sustain in the future?”

, published with my colleagues from , suggests states can play a much more robust role in facilitating equitable access to summer learning. Traditionally, their involvement administering and regulating the use of federal funding, with programming driven largely by local providers, including schools, districts and community-based organizations. As with so many things, this changed dramatically during the pandemic. 

In spring 2021, there was a national call to , driven by COVID-related disruptions to education and anticipated losses in student growth. This call to action, fueled by over $120 billion in funding, positioned states to take on a more substantive role. They were not only required to pass the federal funds on to districts, but also to reserve 1% of them for summer learning programs. 

We wondered: How did states throughout the nation, within a relatively short time frame, respond at this critical point in time? 

Through our analysis of rescue fund plans from the 50 states and Washington, D.C., and interviews with education officials from 37 states, we found that states defined a new role for themselves in supporting summer programming that went well beyond just channeling funds to districts. For example:

• Thirty states articulated their intentions or objectives for summer learning in 2021. These consistently related to expanding access to quality programming to more students, particularly those with the greatest needs and, traditionally, fewer opportunities. Sixteen states developed entirely new policies to shape how summer learning was designed, staffed and delivered.
    
• Many states set priorities for how summer programming was designed and evaluated. In 40 of 51 (78%) American Rescue Fund plans, states requested that districts include social-emotional elements in their programming. Twenty of 51 (41%) requested that districts focus on academics. In 36 of 51 (70%) plans, states required districts and community-based organizations to collect data and report on student participation in, and/or outcomes of, their summer programs.
  
• In eight states, legislatures took actions that may shape future summer learning opportunities, passing new policies related to how funding is awarded, what kinds of programs are eligible and the structure and/or content of summer programs. For example, required every school district to offer 30 days, or 150 hours, of in-person instruction in summer 2021, prioritizing access to students deemed “at risk of retention” based on their 2020-21 academic performance; and Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act required districts to offer in-person learning loss remediation and student acceleration, including summer camps, and to prioritize registration for students with the greatest needs according to approved reading and math screening assessments. 

When called upon, states envisioned a role they could play in summer learning that included and extended beyond providing financing. For instance, many states engaged new partners, such as the YMCA, and set new priorities for program implementation and evaluation. And in some cases, they developed legislation that can solidify a foundation for ongoing statewide support for summer learning opportunities, even as federal pandemic relief funding is set to expire. 

To sustain this momentum, we recommend states consider four strategies to strengthen their role in summer learning:

• Define or refine a vision for summer programming that is both meaningful and feasible;
  
• Understand and use funding, partnering, implementation and evaluation policies as levers to shape how summer learning is enacted throughout the state;
  
• Start planning no later than January, and
  
• Develop a communications strategy to make sure districts and families understand the benefits of summer learning.

The need for learning recovery is no longer a hypothesis. It is now a that will require long-term and sustained investment and commitment, with summer learning being an important and evidence-based factor. 

It took an unprecedented infusion of federal funding and a national call to action to catalyze an expanded state role in summer learning. Now, states are uniquely suited to help sustain the momentum of this strategy nationwide. States have the ability to fund summer programming, influence its design, prioritize underserved students and provide districts with evidence-based resources and guidance. Additionally, states can offer districts as federal funding winds down and they face pressure to direct funding to competing priorities. 

Every young person should have access to high-quality, enriching summer learning experiences, and we now know that states are important players in bringing that vision to life.

, from at the American Institutes for Research, looked at the academic progress of students who attended summer school in 2022 across eight school districts, most of them urban or suburban, in seven states.

Here are four key takeaways:

1. Finally, a bit of positive news about post-pandemic interventions.

The new paper represents what could be the first encouraging findings coming out of post-pandemic interventions, said CALDER’s . Earlier research , he noted, with few positive effects. “One of my takeaways is that it’s nice to be able to say, ‘Hey, there is something that school systems can do to help kids get back on track,” he said, “even if it’s only making incremental change.”  

2. Summer school works for math … but for reading: not so much.

The researchers found that summer programs had sizable positive effects on students’ math achievement, potentially closing about 2% to 3% of districts’ total learning losses in math, but not in reading. The math gains were “positive and significant,” said Goldhaber, large enough for researchers to suggest that districts consider offering summer math programs to many more students in the future. Reading scores improved in just one of the eight districts.

He noted that research has established that so-called “math effects” due to school interventions are more likely than reading effects. 

“The ‘math but not reading’ is consistent with education research writ large,” he said. Simply put, schools have a more significant impact on kids’ math skills than on reading skills, probably because kids read and write outside of school, but don’t necessarily do math.

3. Post-COVID summer programs are at least as good as those schools operated pre-COVID — and they’re targeting kids who need them most.

Researchers compared impacts of current summer programs to those operating before the pandemic and found that they’re having “about the same kind of impact as summer school programs pre-pandemic,” Goldhaber said. That’s encouraging, since in many districts, summer programs have grown in scale but haven’t suffered in quality, according to the new findings. Any time educators push to scale up interventions, he said, it’s harder to maintain quality. “So it’s encouraging” to see quality stay high. 

He also said the programs they examined typically targeted students who were struggling and actually needed the extra help. 

4. The good news about summer math learning is tempered by the fact that so few students are getting it at the moment.

The CALDER researchers estimated that only 15% of eligible students in 2022 were receiving summer math instruction. That means schools last year were under-utilizing what could have been a powerful, effective intervention.

The positive effects, Goldhaber said, “are kind of dwarfed by the magnitude of the COVID learning losses,” with the small number of students in effect disguising its potential effect on achievement. What could be a game-changer for the moment shows a “pretty small” effect on achievement as a result. 

The new study is part of a larger “Road to COVID Recovery” partnership between researchers at the American Institutes for Research, Harvard University, NWEA and 11 school districts in total. Just eight supplied data to this study.  

Researchers used value-added models to estimate the effect of each of the eight summer programs on MAP Growth test scores, with Spring 2022 as the baseline and Fall 2022 as the outcome. Summer sessions ran from three to six weeks, depending on the program, and daily classes ranged from 45 minutes to two hours.

CALDER’s findings could scarcely come at a better time, with recent NAEP scores suggesting that COVID had a “cataclysmic” impact on K–12 education, coming on the heels of a decade of stagnation. 

Other recent research from Michigan showed that the pandemic slowed students’ math achievement over the three-year period from spring 2019 through spring 2022, with achievement growth “substantially lower” than that of comparable students in the three earlier years.

As with the CALDER findings, the Michigan researchers found that scores for English language arts, which include reading and writing, were small and generally not statistically significant.

In December, researchers from , NWEA and Harvard University, looked at achievement in a dozen mid-to-large sized school districts, enrolling more than 600,000 students across 10 states, and found that between fall 2021 and spring 2022, schools had basically put an end to student achievement declines in math and reading relative to pre-pandemic levels — but that average test score gains during the 2021-22 school year hadn’t moved past pre-pandemic levels.

Students in a few elementary grades improved substantially in math, but beyond a few areas, researchers didn’t find a lot of compelling evidence of recovery in other subjects or grades.

Aaron Dworkin, CEO of the , said he was encouraged by the new CALDER findings, adding that summer programs can often try different strategies “that you might not be able to always utilize” during the school year. 

He noted one successful free program in Detroit called , created by Wayne State University’s math department, that uses an unusual model: College math majors get paid to teach high school students, who get paid to teach middle school students.

The program maintains a fun, playful high-energy atmosphere that catches students’ attention, especially in the summer. “Hundreds of kids and families love it,” Dworkin said. “And they’re so supportive.”

School districts hoping to use the summer months to catch students up before fall have been left by the state Legislature to do less with less, officials said.

For the past two years, Oregon school districts and community-based organizations such as the YMCA and Boys & Girls Club have received millions in public funding for summer learning programs from the Legislature: a record high of $240 million in 2021 and $150 million in 2022.

This summer lawmakers gave them no additional funding. As a result, both small and large districts have pared back their offerings this summer, according to interviews with the Capital Chronicle. Some community groups have cut field trips and the number of hours of classes each day. Some groups have cut their programs entirely.

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The lack of options has affected thousands of students across the state, according to a survey from the nonprofit Oregon Afterschool & Summer for Kids Network. It’s especially detrimental to students who’ve suffered setbacks and are still catching up from lost class time during the pandemic. It’s also deprived students of much-needed social and emotional resources.

Administrators and community group leaders say that legislators must think students only needed two summers to catch up from the pandemic.

“This idea of unfinished learning that is a result of the pandemic is not a one and done thing,” said Suzanne West, who leads Salem-Keizer school district’s summer programming. “The young people, especially our youngest students, they’ll be in our system matriculating for the next 10 to 11 years. I’m not suggesting that it’s going to take that long to get them caught up, but it isn’t something that you can resolve in a summer or two for many of these young people.”

Salem-Keizer is on track to serve several thousand more students this summer than in years prior, but will not be able to offer popular robotics and science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, courses that they had in the past two years.

“I think our legislators need to have more of a long-term viewpoint on what it’s going to take for the state in particular, but also locally, just to really address the unfinished learning that resulted from the pandemic,” West said.

During the recent Legislative session, Sens. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, and Sara Gelser-Blouin, D-Corvallis, attempted to get funds for summer programs passed for this year through , which moved to the Senate Ways & Means Committee in late February and never left. By early May, then-director of the Oregon Department of Education, Colt Gill, sent a letter to district leaders telling them summer learning money was unlikely to come. State leaders were concerned about a tight state budget, with little idea that by May 17, they’d learn the state revenue forecast was nearly $2 billion higher than anticipated. Despite Democratic leaders in the House and Senate backing record funding for schools via the state school fund in June, it was too late by then to direct such funds to summer school. Most smaller districts need to finish their planning by April, and most larger districts start planning as early as October.

Six-week walkout

District administrators and community group leaders who talked with the Capital Chronicle said the six-week walkout by Senate Republicans over bills to protect reproductive rights and access to gender-affirming care played a role in losing summer learning funds.

“I think it was just the disruption in the session that caused this and other bills to fail,” said Marisa Fink, executive director of the Oregon Alliance of YMCAs.

Brent Barry, superintendent in the Phoenix-Talent School District said he and other school leaders watched the session tick down to a “point of no return” when it came to funding summer school programs.

“Obviously, the legislative session was crazy,” he said.

In a text message, Dembrow, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said lawmakers were not able to get more funding. He said he hoped that this summer, districts would use any remaining COVID-relief funds they had from the U.S. Department of Education on summer classes, as well as Student Success Act money from the state for programs that serve traditionally underserved students, as well as providing counselors and emotional support staff.

Sen. Suzanne Weber, R-Tillamook, vice-chair of the Senate Education Committee, was adamant that it was not the Senate Republicans walking out of the Legislative session that tanked summer school funding. But Weber, who joined the walkout, declined to address why the lawmakers could not get summer programs funded.

She said that as a retired teacher, she didn’t harbor illusions about recovering from pandemic learning losses in two years.

“I know that it takes longer to catch up after something as catastrophic as COVID was to our kids,” she said.

State Rep. Courtney Neron, D-Wilsonville, who heads the House Committee on Education, said she shares the disappointment that district officials feel about the funding.

“We know these programs work. We need to provide our schools with stable, strategic investments,” Neron said via text message.

‘Double whammy’

In Portland Public Schools, Oregon’s largest school district, the number of “hub sites” offering summer programming across the city has shrunk from 25 last year to 17 this year. The district is serving about 400 fewer students this summer than the last one,, according to Darcy Soto, who oversees the summer learning programs. Soto said the district is using its temporary federal COVID-relief dollars to fund summer learning this year. That money must be used by September 2024, and is the last of the federal funding districts will receive to help with pandemic recovery.

“We’ve created a bridge,” she said, “but the road on the other side of the canyon is not yet built, and we are really hoping that the Legislature will come in on that.”

She and other school district leaders said they need the Legislature to commit to consistent funding.

“It needs to be decades-long support,” said Barry of Phoenix-Talent. “Especially with us, still dealing with the fire. We have a double whammy,” he said, referring to the 2020 Alameda Fire that displaced hundreds of students and their families in the district in southern Oregon.

Last year, more than 400 kids participated in summer programs in the Phoenix-Talent School District. This summer, 180 students are participating, Barry said.

In the 12 districts served by the Malheur Education Service District in eastern Oregon, summer programming has reverted to more spare, pre-pandemic options, said Superintendent Mark Redmond. Programs are mostly geared at students who qualify for support under the federal Migrant Education Program, which aims to ensure that kids in highly mobile families that move seasonally for work earn a high school diploma.

Some summer school programs that used to be a month long are now a week long.

“It’s clearly not as robust as it was the last few years from those that additional funding,” he said.

In Roseburg in southwest Oregon, Superintendent Jared Condon said the lack of summer school funding was not only a loss for students but for their families as well.

“Families in our rural community struggle to find child care and activities for their children over the summer, and I know many were disappointed not to have this additional resource,” he said.

Community groups

For community groups, some of which have received six-figure grants from the state to offer programming during the last two summers, the cuts have been deeper. Some weren’t able to offer anything this summer.

The nonprofit Oregon Afterschool & Summer for Kids Network recently surveyed leaders from community groups that received state funding for summer learning last year.

About 20% of respondents said they’d be unable to offer any programming this summer due to the loss of state funds. Three-quarters said they anticipated offering fewer programs than last year and more than half said they’d be unable to maintain current staffing levels. All-in-all, they anticipated serving about half as many of the 120,000 youth as they had the summer prior.

Summer learning programs provided by the YMCA in Milton Freewater, Albany and Tillamook County all scaled back some options for students, even if they were serving larger numbers of students. According to correspondence among local directors and Fink, the head of the Oregon Alliance of YMCAs, some cut back on field trips and resource-intensive projects.

In Tillamook, each week of summer programming has always had a special theme, according to Emily Critelli, operations director for the Tillamook County Family YMCA. The lack of state funding has stretched the limits of their budget and imaginations.

“Staff have really had to get creative,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on and .

Flush with federal dollars, new and robust offerings have been open to a wide swath of students starting in the summer of 2021 and will continue in many districts this year. But the trend could stop as that pandemic relief money runs out.

Some districts, including , have summer programs, inviting only those students identified as struggling, while others can’t even reach all the children on that list — at least not during the summer. 

Baltimore City Public Schools saw some of the most staggering losses in mathematics at the fourth-grade level — on the 2022 NAEP exams compared to those in 2019 — tying it with Cleveland for worst-in-the-nation.

Baltimore’s and Cleveland’s decline in fourth-grade math scores was nearly double the average eight-point drop among the 26 big city districts that took the tests and dwarfed the average five-point drop of fourth graders nationally. 

Eighth graders in both cities also saw their math test scores plummet: They dropped nine points in Baltimore and eight points in Cleveland. These losses are on par with the rest of the nation: The major cities’ average and the national average for eighth grade math both declined by eight points. 

The 76,000-student Baltimore district has been working for years to remediate those who have fallen behind. It offers extensive summer programming for children at every grade level — more than 22,000 seats from pre-K through 12th grade for summer 2023 programming, up by 2,000 from the year before, district administrators said. But only 15,000 children participated last year, meaning thousands of seats were left open. 

And even with the additional slots, the number might not match the need as it relates to this subject: Just on recent state exams. At 23 Baltimore schools, not a single student tested proficient in math.

Administrators said their district’s summer program was developed, in part, in response to recent NAEP scores. But they know some children who might have benefited from the program will be left out because of budgetary restrictions. 

“Of course, we would love to be able to offer every student an opportunity to engage in learning during the summer,” said Laurie-Lynn Sutton-Platt, director of summer and extended learning.

The upcoming program can’t be a catch-all, but it can help, district administrators said. 

“It’s a start,” said Kerry Steinbrenner, Baltimore’s director of mathematics. “Summer is an ideal opportunity for students to continue to develop their math skills and we don’t want to miss that … We want to try to impact as many kids as we can during that time.” 

Cleveland Metropolitan School District, which serves , is also working to undo damage done by the pandemic. Some 4,200 students are enrolled in its five-week summer learning program with more added to the list every day. The district hopes the figure will reach the height it did last year at 6,500. 

But it can’t guarantee participation. 

“We are working to reach all of the students we can during the summer, but it is dependent upon students and families electing to enroll,” said chief communications officer Roseann Canfora. “We cannot require them to do so.”

Although driven by poor reading, not math scores, some third graders in Tennessee are summer programming this year if they performed poorly on that portion of the state exam and are at risk of being held back.

In the long term, average for fourth and eighth graders on the NAEP between the early 1970s and 2012. Between 2012 and 2020, just before the pandemic struck, they largely flattened while achievement gaps between high and low scorers — a persistent equity issue with NAEP — widened. And then the unprecedented drop in the 2022 scores brought COVID’s impact into full relief. 

How long it will take children to recover from that — or what it will take for more students to reach grade-level proficiency in math — are big questions, but recent research has shown the sharp decline in math proficiency could have lifelong negative consequences. 

Talia Milgrom-Elcott, executive director and founder of Beyond100K, a national network focused on preparing and retaining 150,000 excellent STEM teachers in 10 years, believes wealthier children have long made up what was lost. 

But others will never reach that goal, she said. 

“What’s different isn’t the kids: It’s their experience during the pandemic and the support they’ve received since,” she said. “We could have corralled all our resources to accelerate the mental, emotional and academic recovery of all kids — and if we would have, we’d likely have created the next great generation — but we haven’t. At least not yet.”

The federal government gave schools $190 billion in COVID aid with $3 billion available for summer learning. Experts say the type and quality of the summer programming counts, while some researchers assert that even that unprecedented overall sum is not enough to reverse the level of learning loss. 

Melodie Baker, national policy director at , an organization that promotes math policies that support equity in college readiness and success, said students need engaging and meaningful content that helps them make sense of the material and retain what they’ve learned. This is true whether it’s delivered during the school year or the summer, she said. 

“It’s also important to recognize the role of teacher diversity as a long-term strategy for improving student engagement and learning outcomes,” Baker said. “A diverse teaching staff can provide students with a range of perspectives and experiences that can enhance their understanding of the material and make it more relevant to their lives.”

Some 110,000 of New York City’s roughly 1 million students will participate in summer learning this year, a spokeswoman told ����Ӱ��. NYC students slid nine points on the fourth-grade NAEP mathematics tests and four points on the eighth-grade exams. 

One program, , will focus on grade-level instructional priorities for grades K-8, helping students build math foundations, fluency and conceptual understanding to support learning recovery, acceleration and enrichment, she said. It includes assessments meant to identify weaknesses and help teachers narrow learning gaps ahead of the upcoming school year. Other programs include project-based learning and financial literacy.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, where fourth graders saw their math scores drop 13 points and eighth graders 11 on the 2022 NAEP exams, plans to grow its summertime math offerings for middle schoolers heading into ninth grade.

Mark Bosco, the district’s senior administrator for expanded learning and partnerships, said the four week-long program is expected to swell from 400 to 1,000 participants this summer. 

“This is designed for students who find math abstract,” Bosco said. 

Pre- and post-assessments reveal improvement: Children who stayed for the 16-day duration who could not answer a single pre-algebra question correctly at the start of the program could successfully answer five or six questions out of 20 at the end, Bosco said. 

He described the summer program as hands-on and project-based. In one instance, he said, reflecting on last year’s program, students were made to go through the steps of finding and financing a car, learning about credit applications, compounding interest and loans. 

“It really got them thinking about how math can be so important in everyday life,” he said. “The kids are applying concepts in pretty advanced ways.”

Chicago Public Schools is encouraging schools to implement math camps this summer for rising third and fourth graders in addition to programs for students in middle and high school, a spokesman said. Fourth graders in the district saw a 10-point decrease on math NAEP scores. The loss was worse for eighth graders, who suffered a 12-point decline. 

More than 73,000 of Chicago Public Schools’ engaged in at least one summer program last year. Math enrichment at the district includes the Summer of Algebra and Math Camp programs. A group of elementary schools also will host a Computer Science/Engineering Camp for students in kindergarten through fifth grade. 

Despite the success of some programs, funding remains a concern: Canfora, of the Cleveland schools, said federal COVID relief funds likely will not be available for summer 2024. Her district is building next summer into this fiscal year’s general fund budget, which will be submitted to the school board this month. 

Aaron Philip Dworkin, chief executive officer of the , said districts should always work to establish and strengthen relationships with outside partners to build better programs and to secure funding so they are not as reliant on federal dollars. 

“What do you do when the money runs out?” he asked. “We will figure it out. Everyone will contribute what they can and we will make it work.” 

So it was a huge help to the family, she said, that their school district used COVID relief funds to facilitate a tutoring program out of their church. There’s a “strong and united” community of people who share their Chin ethnic group identity in the small town, said Far, who left her home in Burma, now known as Myanmar, 16 years ago. And the church is a key shared space.

In the early days of the pandemic, the mother would bring her two older kids, who were in kindergarten and sixth grade at the time, to the Monmouth Chin Christian Church for in-person tutoring after their Zoom classes finished. Two paid instructors, both recent high school graduates and members of the local Chin community themselves, would coach them.

“That was really nice. I liked that,” Far said. She thinks the sessions prevented her kids from losing as much ground during the pandemic as they may have otherwise, and she appreciated the district having met the family where they were by coordinating lessons at their place of worship.

The program was but one example of the creative, no-holds-barred approach to tackling COVID learning loss deployed in Monmouth-Roseville schools.

Education experts worry that, nationwide, most academic recovery efforts have been too anemic to fully counter the damages wrought by the pandemic, but this tiny rural district appears to be beating the trend. Across the school system, students and families have gotten a boost from robust summer programming, new curriculums and no less than four different opportunities for tutoring.

Monmouth-Roseville students receiving tutoring outpaced their peers’ growth in literacy and math in 2022, according to standardized tests. And low-income students in the district made faster progress than comparable students statewide, an shows.

Roughly halfway between Chicago and Kansas City, and more than three hours by car from any major metropolitan area, the Monmouth-Roseville school system serves about 1,600 students, nearly a third of whom speak a language other than English at home. Many parents work grueling industrial jobs: In addition to Smithfield Foods — whose South Dakota facility early in the pandemic — Wells Pet Food and Cloverleaf Cold Storage also have plants in the area.

The school system landed $5.3 million in federal stimulus money, its slice of the $190 billion distributed nationwide to help schools recover from the pandemic. While roughly half that sum has gone to improving the HVAC systems in two buildings, leaders have invested practically every leftover dollar into academic recovery, according to spending records obtained by ����Ӱ�� from the district.

“It doesn’t make sense [to use relief money] to pave a parking lot if we have students struggling and behind grade level,” Superintendent Edward Fletcher said.

Tutoring, four ways

In addition to the effort at the Chin church, teachers and community members spearheaded two separate tutoring initiatives during the school day — the time window when researchers say programs have the best chance of reaching students who need them most. 

A Monmouth College education professor began bringing a cohort of pre-service teachers into the elementary school, allowing classes to break out into small-group instruction and “hone in on some of those [learning] deficits,” said Katy Morrison, principal of Harding Primary School.

And a teacher in the district launched a science of reading-based literacy effort that has grown into a partnership with the national tutoring program . The initiative each year matches 100 pre-K and elementary schoolers who are behind in reading with individual tutors for intensive instruction.

“We wanted to target those kids … to see if we can get them to bump up,” said teacher Trisha Olendzki, who coordinates the program.

Outside the school day, the district has invested in tutoring at the nearby Jamieson Community Center, devoting $120,000 for three years’ worth of instruction for 20 high-needs primary school students.

Far’s daughter, who’s now in second grade, worked with tutors there this year. Thanks to the extra help, the young girl has mastered material more complex than her brother had at that age, Far said.

In the classroom, the district put more than half-a-million stimulus dollars into curriculum upgrades to make sure teachers have access to “top-notch” reading and math materials, said Amy Freitag, Monmouth-Roseville’s director of grants. Leaders devoted another $150,000 to train teachers in the new approaches.

Outside the school year, district leaders carved off about $73,000 in COVID funds to run four weeks of summer learning and enrichment for three consecutive years in 2022, 2023 and 2024. The figure budgets for 11 teacher salaries each summer and a modest stipend for supplies.

“We still have to teach grade-level curriculum, but we also have to bring kids up to speed,” Freitag said. “That’s where these supplemental programs come in.”

And through it all, district leaders have made sure to cater the interventions directly to the students and families most in need of support. Some 96% of students are low-income, 20% are English learners, 58% are white, 28% are Hispanic, 4% are Black and 4% are Asian.

Tin Tial, now a sophomore at Monmouth College, was one of the recent high school grads hired to spearhead the tutoring at the Chin church in spring of 2020. 

“The students definitely needed the help,” she said, explaining many parents had struggled with virtual learning due to language barriers

To advertise the program, the church sent out an email blast and handed out fliers to every family, she said, which she thinks was an effective approach because “basically all of us go to church.”

Parents in the community knew “they could rely on us,” Tin said, because she and the other tutor shared their culture and language. The young instructor distributed her phone number to families, who would text back and forth with her regularly.

The Chin community in Monmouth formed about a decade ago, she said, and now consists of roughly 50 families. Many, including Far’s, were drawn by jobs at the Smithfield plant, she said. The community immediately established the church and have used it as a gathering point ever since.

To Freitag, who brought the church-based program to life by greenlighting grant money to pay the tutors, the effort was one piece of a wider puzzle to help families recover from the pandemic. 

She’s proud that Monmouth-Roseville parents seeking to catch their kids up have numerous high-quality choices.

“The options are endless,” Freitag said.

Even before COVID, 9 in 10 middle schoolers in the shrinking city were below proficient in math and reading, many school buildings were structurally unsound and gaping budget deficits had landed the school system under the fiscal control of the state for the better part of the last two decades.

When relief funds began flowing, the challenges were great — a year of school closures and high absence rates had set students even further behind — but so were the means. The district scored nearly , over $23,000, as any other large system nationwide, thanks to a funding formula weighted for students living in poverty. Detroit has a median household income of $34,762, according to , and a childhood poverty rate roughly three times higher than the national average.

It was a test of the full power of federal relief dollars: Could $1.3 billion help get one of the nation’s most embattled school systems back on track?

Fast-forward two years and experts question whether the influx has delivered the needed boost to students. With more than half the money already out the door, has gone toward bringing students back to classrooms, according to officials, despite two-thirds of the district’s 53,400 students last year missing school at a threshold researchers say puts them academically at risk. And the superintendent in March announced to come in June.

Meanwhile, the district is using $700 million of the relief cash on expenditures it normally pays for through its general fund, stockpiling money in its reserves for district-wide facilities upgrades over the next five or more years — a creative way to skirt the September 2024 deadline on the use-it-or-lose-it federal funds.

It would be “impossible” to complete the more than one thousand facility projects the district has planned in just a few years, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told ����Ӱ�� in an email. “Our students deserve to have roofs that do not leak or schools that do not close because outdated boilers break down.”

Taken together, the Detroit spending decisions paint a picture of both the promise and the pitfalls of schools’ handling of stimulus money. And they serve as a sobering reminder of what researchers have emphasized for over a year: relief cash alone likely will not be enough to offset the damage wrought by the pandemic.

Nearly a year behind 

The scale of recovery efforts in Detroit and elsewhere falls short of the magnitude of learning losses, worries Harvard University education professor Thomas Kane, who researches COVID’s impact on education.

Comparing 2019 test scores to those in 2022, he calculates that students in Detroit fell nearly a year behind where they were previously. But he estimates the district’s key interventions — summer school for roughly 9,000 students and high-impact tutoring for about the same number — are only enough to spur about a fifth of the needed gains to get youth back on track.

“This is common in districts around the country,” the education economist said. “They can list the interventions that they’re fielding … but they’re not doing the math on the effect sizes that they should be expecting from those things.”

He suggests a quick sanity check: If students are a year back in their learning, catching them up will cost, at minimum, a district’s typical yearly operating budget. In Detroit, that would mean devoting roughly two-thirds of all relief dollars to academic recovery — a level the district is far from approaching.

District spokesperson Chrystal Wilson pointed out that the district is continuing to scale up small-group and one-on-one literacy and math help for struggling students. COVID money helped expand the effort initially, but now it’s built into the district budget so the support doesn’t disappear when relief funds dry up, the superintendent said. 

As a result, a higher share of �ٱ�ٰ��Ǿ���’s lowest-scoring students are on track to make a year’s worth of growth in reading and math this year than pre-pandemic, Wilson said.

Stacey Young is a Detroit mother of six, including three youngsters at Davison Elementary-Middle School. Last year, the school advertised tutoring and all three children attended, but the program enrolled more than a dozen students per teacher, she said, and her kids’ grades, which had suffered on the heels of virtual learning, did not improve. This year, her youngest son continues to struggle in math.

“On his report card, they said, ‘You need to seek some support,’” Young said. But the school had “nothing to offer” in terms of additional learning options, she said.

Superintendent Vitti recognizes the problem, but explained hiring staff for afterschool programming has posed a challenge.

“Our teachers are burnt out after the school day,” he said.

The students who remain the furthest behind in their learning also tend to be the ones who have had continued attendance challenges, he added, meaning the learning recovery efforts laid out by the district often miss the students who need them most.

“The issue here is not funding. The issues here are student access, quality human capital and the ability to scale human capital,” Vitti said.

Bernita Bradley, a parent advocate in Detroit with the National Parents Union, is frustrated that the district has also cut back on summer enrichment programs. After opening summer learning to all interested students in 2022, the school system will offer programming this summer.

“There’s so much that’s needed for our children to catch up,” Bradley said. “This is the time for families to be getting more support … as opposed to canceling something.”

Fixing neglected facilities

It’s a delicate balance between shorter- and longer-term stimulus investments, because Detroiters — Young and Bradley included — acknowledge campuses across the city are sorely in need of repairs. The scale of efforts like tutoring or summer school are constrained in part because upgrades to buildings represent the single-biggest line item in �ٱ�ٰ��Ǿ���’s COVID relief spending plan.

Capital improvements have long been on hold in the district because for most of the last two decades a state-appointed emergency manager controlled its purse, making budget cuts to close a longstanding deficit, explained Sarah Reckhow, associate professor at Michigan State University.

“An easy way to cut was simply to not spend money maintaining buildings,” she said.

It created a backlog of roughly a in needed upgrades to fix issues like leaky roofs and moldy buildings, Vitti told NBC in 2019. Michigan is among the bottom five states nationwide for equitable school funding, according to a from The Education Trust-Midwest, meaning the challenged district would have had to increase taxes on Detroiters to make facilities upgrades.

When the $1.3 billion COVID windfall hit, the district carved off $700 million to finally address conditions that many deemed shameful.

It’s a tactic common across high-poverty districts, which are more likely to have unmet infrastructure needs. School systems serving mostly low-income students have been far more likely than affluent districts to spend emergency relief dollars on facilities or transportation, a February found — meaning less cash leftover for academic support.

But from a fiscal perspective, it’s a prudent choice, said Elizabeth Moje, professor of education at the University of Michigan. �ٱ�ٰ��Ǿ���’s schools need “massive renovations,” she said, and because the expenses don’t recur, the investment won’t contribute to future budgetary issues when federal funds dry up.

Still, doing so requires creative accounting as the construction projects will extend years beyond the deadline for spending relief money, said Phyllis Jordan, associate director of Georgetown University’s FutureEd think tank. Detroit is using COVID stimulus money to cover $700 million worth of expenses it typically pays for with its general fund, leaving the saved cash in its reserves with no spending deadline. The size of its general fund has swollen over 500% since stimulus funds began flowing and will be drawn down over the next five years, the district said.

“There’s a lot of that budget jiu-jitsu going on,” Jordan said.

Some 21 states, including Michigan, place no limit on the amount of money districts can keep in their reserves, allowing them to stockpile extra funds past the federal deadline so long as they first substitute COVID money for allowable expenses typically paid out of their general fund. 

Meanwhile, a recently announced round of layoffs in Detroit was an even more bitter pill knowing so much cash is waiting unspent, educators said.

Daniella Borum is a college transition advisor at the Detroit School of Arts who was told in early April that her position, which she’s held since 2019, would be terminated. Now she wonders who will help the high schoolers on her campus through the stressors not only of preparing for higher education, but of navigating daily life.

“It doesn’t have to be Ms. Borum here as a college advisor, but the kids need [someone],” she said. “They need support services, period.” 

Re-engaging students

A key component of COVID catch-up, in Detroit and nationwide, has been luring students back to classrooms. Student attendance took a major hit in the pandemic’s wake and chronic absenteeism, which researchers typically define as missing at least 10% of school days, reached unprecedented levels across the country’s largest districts — 69% last year in Detroit.

The district deployed staff to knock on the doors of families whose children were absent, seeing if there were ways they could help get those students to class.

“Families wanted their children coming back,” said Gwendolyn Jachim, a Detroit elementary school teacher who signed up to knock on doors in the summer of 2021. Still the conversations were difficult, and many parents remained unconvinced. She recalls virus-wary parents who, after the nearby Flint, Michigan, water crisis left , said they didn’t trust the government on public health matters.

For its youngest students, the district also ran summer boot camps to help children prepare for the transition into kindergarten. Detroit educator Kristy Kitchen co-led a cohort of a dozen youngsters in six weeks of programming, including weekly field trips. While the program’s past iterations had sometimes required teachers to purchase supplies themselves, educators last summer were flush with markers, science experiments and backpacks for students, she said.

“It was a very good opportunity for the kids,” Kitchen said. “They’ve had kindergarten boot camp prior to that year, but they didn’t have all those resources that we had.”

The two campaigns, door knocking and kindergarten boot camp, together amounted to roughly $1.8 million, according to figures provided by the district — less than 1% of its total stimulus allotment.

This year’s chronic absenteeism rates have dipped slightly to 60%, which the district attributes to its efforts. Still, 6 in 10 youth are missing class at a level that researchers say puts their education in peril. 

Using stimulus funds, the district also invested in several fan-favorite activities aimed at boosting morale and engagement. The city paid thousands to vendors like Chuck E. Cheese, Top Golf, Video Game Mobile, Dave & Buster’s and Zap Zone Extreme, according to spending records obtained by ����Ӱ�� through a Freedom of Information request. Some $47,000 went to field trips to Blake’s Orchard & Cider Mill, which Detroit Federation of Teachers President Lakia Wilson said is an annual tradition.

“These are city kids, so it’s good that they get to go out … picking their own apples, seeing pumpkins grow in a patch,” Wilson said. “You can’t live in Michigan and not go to the apple orchard.”

Contracts come under scrutiny

In a district with a past history of , �ٱ�ٰ��Ǿ���’s emergency relief spending has not been without its share of expenses some saw as questionable.

For its tutoring contract worth over $3 million, the district chose a vendor led by Superintendent Vitti’s wife, Rachel Vitti, ex-director of the literacy nonprofit . Leaders disclosed the relationship when they discussed the contract in 2021 and said the provider was chosen because of its strong track record. Still, amid pushback, Rachel Vitti last summer from her role leading the nonprofit.

And the district’s $68 million COVID testing contract received scrutiny for a price tag twice as high as the nearby University of Michigan’s, which used the same provider and served a comparable number of students.

The contracts “cannot be compared apples to apples,” Rebecca Throop, a spokesperson for testing provider LynxDX Inc., said in an email. Detroit schools requested a higher number of tests and the university hired staff independently to assist collecting samples, she said.

LynxDX Inc. is now a to the Detroit Public Schools Community District, listed as providing support at the $20,000 to $99,999 level.

“As a company, we recognize the importance of giving back to the communities we serve and where our employees live,” Throop said.

But zooming out beyond individual contracts, Reckhow, at Michigan State, sees the Detroit school district’s position as inherently difficult. The $1.3 billion is a lot of money, she acknowledges, but doesn’t think the time-limited boost can erase all the problems of the last decades.

“There’s the assumption that you get a one-time infusion of money and you recover,” she said. “But when you’re talking about a district where the needs are as high (as �ٱ�ٰ��Ǿ���’s) and where the pre-existing issues of inequality were already enormously pronounced, the timeframe of these relief dollars is just not really up to the task.”

Last year, youth in Maupin had the opportunity to join a summer program that brought them on field trips across the state. It was run by South Wasco Youth Programs, a nonprofit serving about 110 students in north central Oregon. 

“We’re in a rural, impoverished area, so to do that was pretty amazing,”Director Amber Anderson said,

Anderson was able to pay for those trips last year through a $45,000 summer learning grant from the state.

This year, she got nothing. 

“I’m really upset, I’m not going to lie,” she said about having to cut field trips for kids.

The reason: a new requirement from the state that grant recipients have additional insurance coverage for sexual abuse and molestation claims. 

In 2021, the State Legislature approved $40 million to go toward summer learning programs offered by community-based groups. More than 500 took advantage of the money. This year, the state approved nearly $48 million for the grants, but because of the insurance requirement 376 groups were able to receive grants this year, a 25% decline. 

The insurance requirement

During the summer of 2021, the Oregon Community Foundation was in charge of distributing grants. It required grantees to have insurance, but did not require they specify the different types of coverage. The foundation is a nonprofit unaffiliated with any state or government agencies, and it issued the grants as donations. 

This year, the Oregon Association of Education Service Districts was in charge of awarding the grants to community groups. Because it is a quasi-government agency – its fiscal agent is the Clackamas Education Service District, a taxpayer-funded public entity – the Oregon Department of Justice had to review the application process. The department found that the additional sexual abuse and molestation insurance would be required for community groups as it is for schools. 

In March, Jennifer Brenden, program administrator at the Oregon Association of Education Service Districts and the Oregon Department of Education, learned the additional coverage would be required and tried to do everything possible to get it changed.

Oregon school districts and many large nonprofit community groups such as the YMCA and Boys & Girls Club already have coverage for sexual misconduct and molestation claims, but small community groups and nonprofits have not needed it to operate. It can be difficult to secure and be prohibitively expensive, Brenden said.

“The Department of Education worked really hard to figure out workarounds and how to provide support. Together we tried everything, turned every stone,” she said.

In the end, getting rid of the requirement would involve changing state law, and there was nothing that could be done fast enough. 

Many groups learned in the middle of filling out grant applications in June that they would no longer be eligible. It disqualified the South Wasco Youth Programs.

“I run a very small nonprofit,”Anderson said. “We bring in maybe $95,000 a year. So to buy $10,000 worth of insurance? That’s not even reasonable.”

A few weeks later, the education service districts’ association announced it was able to allow groups to use grant money to pay for the insurance. This set Anderson on a quest to find insurance. 

“By the time I then submitted the application all the money was gone,” she said. 

Brenden said groups were emailing and calling asking her what had happened.

“There were some real tough conversations after that,” she said. “It’s a limited pot of dollars. It’s not available forever. We went back to ODE and asked: ‘Are there any more dollars for these organizations?’ And we were told there wasn’t,” she said.

Matt Boulay, executive director of the Salem Art Association, was able to secure the extra insurance for his group by mid-July and finish submitting his grant application in time to get funding. But because it all came through so late, the group will use some of the grant money to continue funding activities through the rest of this year. 

“To have this process play out in the middle of summer was unnecessary,” Boulay said. “It’s not insurance that’s necessary for our operations, it’s insurance that’s necessary to meet a requirement that’s outdated and misplaced by the Legislature.”

Fewer groups got more money

Average grants increased from $75,000 in 2021 to $150,000 this year because fewer groups received money. In Multnomah County, 165 groups received grants last year. This year, 96 did. But the total amount of the awards for the county was nearly $1.2 million higher this year than last year. 

Woodburn-based nonprofit CAPACES received $385,000, almost double its 2021 award. The additional money allowed the group to offer programs in Salem, Turner and the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility, as well as Woodburn, said Executive Director Jaime Arredondo.

CAPACES ran a youth job training academy, took students on field trips to the coast and hired parents and community members to teach culturally specific programming about cuisine, language and indigenous medicine.

“That’s kind of an added value, giving the state a workforce of people that can provide back to their communities,” Arredondo said.

Larger grants also helped cover the increased costs of programs due to inflation for many community groups, Brenden said. 

“When we looked at cost inflation, transportation alone was four times more expensive than it was last year,” Brenden said. 

Next summer

Brenden said the Education Service District’s association would consider being the grant distributor again next year, but she would hire more staff and get started earlier.

She said the state should consider setting aside additional funds to help community-based groups pay for the insurance required by the state.

Because grantees were not required to report how much of their allotted grant budget went to paying for the added insurance, Brenden is unsure how much of the state’s total summer learning funding went to covering insurance costs.

Brenden said the state should also require the insurance industry to make it easier for small groups to get the sexual abuse and molestation claims coverage. 

“If that is what nonprofits are required to do now to do business, then we need to tell the industry this should be the standard.” 

She said the state needs to commit to long-term funding of summer programs not to decide on a year-by-year basis as they have the last two years.

“They need to make a decision to make it sustainable,” she said “And tell them this is going to happen for five years in a row. Community-based organizations right now can’t build programs.” 

Despite attempts to find a legislative fix, state Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, said it’s proving to be difficult. Dembrow championed the summer learning money and asked the Legislative Policy and Research Office to look into what could be done to change the rules around the insurance requirement. 

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do to eliminate their need for insurance, but we will make it clear that their grant can cover the cost,” Dembrow said in a text. The Senate Education Committee will begin planning discussions in October to try to get issues resolved before next year’s legislative session. Dembrow said the goal will be to get summer learning grants funded for the next two summers to provide some consistency for community organizations that want to continue providing robust programming.

“The goal will be to get next year’s funding nailed down early in the legislative session so that they can plan with certainty earlier than in the past,” he said.

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“It’s actually a little surreal” seeing the rich slate of offerings, said Brodrick Clarke, vice president of the .��

He’s worked at summer learning organizations for over a quarter century, making what used to be a difficult case to school administrators: That districts should offer camp-style July programs to all students rather than enrolling only those who flunked classes during the academic year.

Suddenly, his job has become much easier. 

A growing consensus has elevated summer learning programs to top priority after three consecutive school years disrupted by the pandemic. Several studies, including a 2018 , show camps blending fun and academics give students a leg up in key subject areas. So with millions of students nationwide lagging behind grade level in math and reading, and with schools sitting on billions of dollars in COVID relief cash, summer learning programs have become a go-to solution. 

So far, schools nationwide have poured $3.1 billion in American Rescue Plan dollars into summer and afterschool initiatives, according to an from Georgetown University’s FutureEd think tank. Summer learning has emerged as districts’ “number one priority” for academic recovery spending, said Phyllis Jordan, the organization’s associate director.

“We’re actually investing in programs that we know work and have had results. We just get to do them at a much larger scale because there’s finally funding for it,” U.S. Deputy Education Secretary Cindy Marten told ����Ӱ��. 

“If you put enriching, engaging experiences together for kids and give them a chance to be together, they can learn.”

However, the picture remains murky on just how much progress states, districts and community organizations have actually made toward catching up students before the school year re-starts.

“We do not have data on the number of summer programs this year compared to years past,” said Jen Rinehart, senior vice president of strategy and programs at the Afterschool Alliance. “Similarly, we do not have data on the number of students enrolled this year.”

Marten acknowledged she was not aware of any federal effort to track how many youth are engaging in summer learning programs this year and did not clarify when the results of these programs will come into focus.

To fill the gap, ����Ӱ�� obtained exclusive datasets from , a data service that tracks school policy, and the research-based auditing publicly shared information about districts’ summer offerings. Burbio’s figures include the 200 largest U.S. school systems and CRPE’s cover 100 major metropolitan districts, many of which overlap. Though there are roughly 13,800 districts in the country, the 200 largest account for over a quarter of the nation’s students.

The analysis comes after the Department of Education announced the Engage Every Student Initiative in July to expand access to summer and afterschool offerings. Accompanying the launch, First Lady Jill Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona toured programs in Connecticut, Michigan and Georgia.

The Burbio and CRPE numbers reveal that the vast majority of school systems did indeed provide opportunities for students to catch up on learning and most offered their summer programs at no cost to families. Specifically:

• 93% of districts, according to Burbio, and 87%, according to CRPE, offered summer learning programs this year

• 79% of school systems that had programs provided them at no cost to families

• The average program length was 154 hours, just under four weeks and roughly equivalent to 12% of the academic school year. However, some offerings only covered about 30 hours, while others made up nearly 350 total hours

Additionally, most districts offered programs that went beyond rote academics — including activities such as theater, debate and robotics — and about 2 in 5 worked with community organizations to flesh out their camps. Nearly all programs included breakfast, lunch or both:

• Of the districts that offered summer learning opportunities, at least 83% included credit recovery options, 80% mixed academics with enrichment activities such as sports, arts or social-emotional learning, 48% offered programs for students with learning disabilities and 39% had dedicated options for English learners

• 96% of programs provided meals to children and 74% offered free transportation

• At least 39% of districts partnered with community organizations on summer offerings

The data align with recent figures reported by the , which surveyed a representative sample of 859 public schools in June. The figures are not an apples-to-apples comparison with the Burbio and CRPE data because they focus on individual schools rather than districts, but also point to extensive programming nationwide. NCES found:

• Three-quarters of schools offered learning and enrichment programs this summer

• School leaders estimated that 18-20% of their students enrolled, compared to 13-16% during a typical year

• 49% of education leaders said they partnered with an outside organization, 14% offered internship programs and 13% offered summer jobs or work-based learning programs

“When we talk about academic recovery … you can’t do it just within the regular school day,” said Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators. “You need to make sure acceleration is extra time. The summer has become that time.”

A question of equity

Maritza Guridy, who has five children in Philadelphia public schools and also works as deputy director of parent voice with the , said some families in her network were able to find programs that met their needs while others were not.

“For those that [registered] early, they were able to get in there. For those that waited, it’s unfortunate,” she told ����Ӱ��.

She enrolled her kids in a local chapter of the nationally acclaimed program and also for a shorter stint at an organization called . Among her considerations were aspects like program cost, learning opportunities and emotional supports, but also factors like fun, clear communication from leadership and a building with central air.

In addition to academics, her children have practiced yoga and went for twice-a-week swim lessons at the local YMCA. One day, they came home with a gleeful announcement: “Mommy, I jumped into the deep side of the pool today — and I wasn’t scared!”

It thrilled Guridy, but she knew other families have missed out on similar joys because of barriers such as lack of transportation or no translated information about the opportunity. Guridy wants officials who plan programs to consider accessibility.

“Is [messaging] being offered in different languages?,” she prompts them. “How are parents supposed to enroll their children if they don’t even understand the application?”

It’s an equity issue, said Clarke, the National Summer Learning Association VP.  Youth who don’t have access to summer programs can see academic gains evaporate between June and September, a well-documented concept known as “summer slide.” Now the issue is particularly pressing, because students living in poverty have the starkest pandemic learning deficits.

“Families with access and privilege go into their bank accounts and provide great opportunities for their kids during the summertime,” he said. “The 26 million young people that are on free and reduced lunch … don’t have that luxury to do so. But they certainly need, want and deserve to have those opportunities.”

‘Explosion’ or ‘afterthought?’

With the stakes at an all-time high as schools reel from the pandemic’s impacts, experts have mixed views on whether summer offerings have actually scaled up this year.

“We’re seeing an explosion of programs,” said Ron Ottinger, executive director of , an organization connected to a network of thousands of providers across the country.

Meanwhile, Christine Pitts, who has done her own summer learning analysis as CRPE’s director of impact and communications, has a more pessimistic view.

In 2022, “[districts] were offering less than they were last year. So it’s almost like summer slipped back into that characterization of being an afterthought again,” she told ����Ӱ��.

Her team found that school systems provided fewer offerings for English learners and fewer programs with social-emotional supports this summer compared to last.

“It’s hard to speculate at a national level, why that might have dropped off,” said Marten, the deputy secretary. Some districts may have decided their 2021 summer programs had done enough to catch learners up and that they could scale back this year, she said. However, if leaders wanted to maintain programs but were facing a lack of funds, she encouraged them to tap resources from the new initiative.

Contrasting the data Pitts saw, Nicholas Munyan-Penney spoke to officials in over 30 states about their summer learning programs while researching for a report with . The narrative he heard was of continued growth.

“Anecdotally, they’ve said that there’s definitely been an increase in enrollment this summer,” the researcher told ����Ӱ��.

Rinehart also cites data that indicate an upward trend. In the spring of 2022, her organization and 90% said they were planning to offer summer programs, compared to 79% at the same time a year earlier. Respondents also indicated they expected upticks in enrollment, with an increased share expressing concern they wouldn’t be able to meet families’ demand for programs.

In one of the only direct comparisons between this year and last, the recently released NCES data found no change between 2021 and 2022, with the share of schools saying they offered summer learning programs holding steady at 75%.

‘How are we going to fill the staff?’

One factor often hindering summer learning expansion has been a staff, only the latest symptom of wider shortages that have affected K-12 schools for much of the past year.

“Officials are finding it very hard to find teachers,” said Domenech. “In many cases, the problem has been that where the district has large numbers of kids sign up for the summer programs, they wind up wanting to cut back because they just don’t have the staff to cover it.”

In Madison, Wisconsin, for example, administrators had to from their summer offerings, about 1 in 6 students who had signed up, because of “unanticipated staffing challenges.”

Gia Maxwell works as a site director at summer learning provider . Throughout the spring, she joined monthly calls with leaders from across the Breakthrough network, which operates in 26 cities. Her colleagues were continually worried about finding enough instructors.

“Everyone was talking about, ‘How are we going to fill the staff? How are we going to fill the staff,’” she told ����Ӱ��.

Her Miami program usually finds all 130 youth and 30 adult staff for its summer teaching corps by May, she said. But this year, it took until halfway through teacher training in mid-June to recruit everyone, and they had to hire more teenage candidates than usual. 

The Providence, Rhode Island Breakthrough location was forced to this summer altogether, explaining “we have struggled to recruit students and teachers this year.”

To combat shortages, Arkansas brought in tutors from its to staff summer programs, said Munyan-Penney. In West Virginia, program leaders pulled from teacher training programs in the state to fill out their summer learning staff ranks. And Arizona boosted teachers’ wages 20% for the summer months to entice instructors.

They’re among the states “​​thinking about the staffing issue and being proactive about it,” said the Education Reform Now researcher.

‘Math, Reading and a Little Stampeding’

Several states shared provisional data with ����Ӱ�� on their summer offerings, though many said they won’t have finalized enrollment or academic impact numbers for months.  

In Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey launched the which state leaders estimate has served about 100,000 campers — 10% of the state’s 1 million students — across 680 sites, including at least one in every county. 

Arizona officials went to great lengths to spread the word about the program. The state ran a including ads on television, radio, social media and in magazines, and direct texts to parents in both English and Spanish informing them of the free programs.

“We targeted lower-income families, as the goal of free summer camp was to see the highest number of campers from families that may not have been able to afford an adventure-style summer camp in prior years,” Kaitlin Harrier, the governor’s senior policy advisor, wrote in an email to ����Ӱ��. 

The governor’s office opted for a “summer camp” approach rather than a “summer school” model, describing the opportunities as “Math, Reading, and a Little Stampeding,” said Harrier.

“It is no secret that when kids are having fun, it sets up a great foundation for learning,” she added.

In Connecticut, the state also rolled out a grant program to help providers beef up their summer offerings and defray program costs for low-income youth. The state disbursed roughly $8 million in grants last summer and increased that sum to $12 million for 2022, said Eric Scoville, communications director for the State Department of Education.

Enrollment across a sample of 121 locations nearly doubled, from 17,000 to 32,000, between 2020 and 2021, according to an spearheaded by University of Connecticut researchers. However, it’s too early to tell how many students the state reached this summer, said Scoville.

In North Carolina, all 115 school districts offered one or more summer learning programs this year funded by COVID relief money, each attended by 30 to 200 students, said Todd Silberman, a public information officer at the state’s Department of Public Instruction. The enrollment figures will not be finalized for several weeks, he said, but he expects the total will be lower than 2021, when the state legislature required math, science, English and enrichment summer learning programs.

At the city level, Baltimore City Public Schools has scaled up its programming sharply thanks to COVID relief dollars. The maximum number of youth the 77,800-student district had served between June and August previous to the pandemic had been 9,000, said Ronda Welsh, the district’s extended learning coordinator. But in 2021, they reached 15,000 and have served at least that many again in 2022.

“Our goal was to provide as many opportunities as we could for students in Baltimore,” Welsh told ����Ӱ��.

Tulsa, for its part, has also cultivated a thriving summer learning culture, part of a wider “City of Learning” initiative that has been in the works for several years. That infrastructure has made the district into a poster child for community partnership, with over 40 youth-serving organizations contributing to the district’s programming this summer — including clubs for debating, biking and rowing.

“The summer is the time that kids get to experience those things they otherwise would not have the opportunity to do, especially during the school year,” said Jackie DuPont, executive director of the , which orchestrates the connections between the nonprofits and the district.

However, the district has not been able to maintain its high summer learning enrollment. Last summer, about a third of its 33,000 students participated in summer learning — an unusually large share. This year, a total of 7,000 youth engaged in the school system’s initiative, Director of Expanded Learning Jessica Goodman estimated. 

“​​Last summer was really an immediate response to not having kids in our school buildings … so some families just needed that time more than they did this summer,” she told ����Ӱ��.

Despite enrollment fluctuations, Marten believes the proliferation of new summer learning programs nationwide will outlast the influx of federal funding.

“Communities will fall in love with these programs,” she said. “They will say, ‘We’re never going to let this stop. We’re not just doing this because there was a pandemic. We’re doing this because this is what’s good for kids. Let’s keep doing it.’”

The course is “Cloudy With a Chance of Science,” and James Ramirez places his hand-fashioned tin foil boat into a bin of water, squealing with excitement as he discovers it floats. The first grader and his classmates are learning about density by testing how many pebbles each students’ contraption will hold before it sinks.

Ramirez tosses in every stone from his first handful — quickly surpassing the class record of five pebbles — and rushes back for more as his boat remains above water. The child, who is reserved and hasn’t spoken yet this period, keeps adding weight, laughing and wriggling his shoulders with each successful placement.

“…27, 28, 29…” 

He has the attention of the class now and his peers count with him.

“…42, 43, 44…”

With each pebble, Ramirez is doing more than proving he crafted a sturdy ship. He is accomplishing something educators across the country are anxiously hoping he and millions of students like him can do: accelerate their learning to get back on track after COVID.

The first grader is one of 481 youngsters enrolled in Baltimore’s Emerging Scholars program this summer and one of over 15,000 students participating in no-cost summer learning opportunities through Baltimore City Schools. Thanks to COVID relief funds, the 77,800-student district is serving more than twice as many young people as its pre-pandemic max of 9,000, said Ronda Welsh, the district’s extended learning coordinator. 

Among the offerings are typical summer school options like credit recovery and career exploration, but also more specialized programs like debate, farm and forest camp, robotics and “Freedom Schools” focused on Black history. The Emerging Scholars program stands out as a camp providing accelerated academic instruction, but with none of the cost or admission requirements typical of gifted programming.

“Our goal was to provide as many opportunities as we could for students in Baltimore,” Welsh told ����Ӱ��. “We wanted students to not only make progress academically, focusing on math and [English], but also the social-emotional aspect as well as enrichment.”

Young people in and nationwide continue to score far below pre-pandemic levels in reading and math tests, with more severe deficits for high-poverty schools. Experts estimate it may take a half-decade to fully recover. Meanwhile, many officials pin their hopes on summer learning efforts like those in Baltimore to make up lost ground.

“Especially because of COVID, the kids are a little behind,” said Claudia Wiseman, a second-grade summer science instructor with Baltimore Emerging Scholars. During the school year, she’s an elementary special educator and said months of Zoom school have meant many young learners still lack basic skills like how to hold a pencil. The students she’s teaching now will be “a little better prepared for second grade,” she hopes.

It’s afternoon pickup time at the Emerging Scholars’ John Ruhrah Elementary School campus, and Ramirez’s mother Christy Miranda arrives. Staff tell her about her son’s latest feat: 63 pebbles.

Miranda beams. The program is helping the family recognize their son’s potential, unlocking academic capacities she didn’t realize he possessed.

“He’s learning a lot,” she told ����Ӱ��. “I didn’t know he had the ability to do so.”

During the year, her son has few opportunities for rigorous coursework, she said, explaining that his school is “very defunded.”

But this summer is different. Baltimore Emerging Scholars is a six-week gifted and talented program. In collaboration with , a global leader in gifted education, the camp provides high-level content in science, math and literacy to rising 1st  through 6th graders. 

“During the regular year, [school] is just teachers rambling on about stuff I already know about … but this is new material,” said rising fifth grader Basil Coleman. “I’m just having a great time here.”

Unlike most other gifted programs, the camp doesn’t rely solely on test scores for eligibility but rather welcomes virtually any student who is up for the challenge. As a result, the cohort of students is more diverse than the group of students identified for gifted lessons during the academic year. Some 68% of summer students are Black, 14% are Hispanic, 9% are white and 3% are Asian — figures that closely resemble district-wide demographic averages.

Rae Lymer, who manages the program and reviews every student application, explained that anytime a student has a recorded assessment at or above grade level, it automatically qualifies the youngster for the program. If such a metric does not exist, the administrator calls families directly, looking for an alternative qualification such as if the applicant likes to ask lots of questions or thinks outside the box.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time, what I hear is, ‘My kid is completely under-challenged and they’re not motivated by school and so that’s why you’re not seeing scores,’” Lymer told ����Ӱ��, explaining that the program almost never turns away motivated students. 

Youth who choose to participate usually rise to the occasion, the data suggest. While the summer program does not yet have numbers on its academic impact, Emerging Scholars also runs afterschool offerings during the fall and spring. In 2020-21, the most recent data available, the share of participants testing at or above grade level increased 18 percentage points in reading and 39 percentage points in math over the course of the year.

“We’re learning advanced stuff and we’re able to get ahead,” said 11-year-old Ama Amoateng, between stints on the playground during recess. “It makes me feel smarter.”

After engaging in the summer program, “many of these kids will become identified [as gifted],” anticipates Stacey Johnson, spokesperson for Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. “It’s reaching kids we wouldn’t otherwise reach.”

Indeed, parent Torrey Parker said his daughter Skylar got “bumped up” in reading and science last school year, which he believes was “absolutely” because of the work she did in the program.

The rapid growth attests to what education scholars have long posited: That academic talent is equally distributed across all students without regard to race, class or gender — but that access to advanced learning opportunities are not. 

“We firmly believe that if opportunities are provided, students will flourish,” said Lymer.

In one reading course focused on mystery novels, rising fifth graders are already 12 chapters into their third book in as many weeks and engaging in what their instructor called “detective work” to predict the ending. In another classroom, second graders concoct oobleck, a water and cornstarch mixture that has both solid and liquid properties, to learn about states of matter and “non-Newtonian fluids.” Down the hall in “Toyology,” first graders study inertia and momentum by unleashing metal and plastic slinkies down a set of stairs.

A classroom of fifth graders peer down the lenses of microscopes at magazine cutouts of the letter “e,” diagramming what they see at various magnification levels. It’s several students’ first time using a microscope and they’re surprised to find what one describes as “static on a TV.”

“They were playing, but they were also learning,” said Toyology instructor Tamika Robinson.

Even the students admit it’s a good time.

“Because it’s called summer school, most of us thought it would be like school … but instead it’s a lot of activities and really engaging,” said Brooke Bennett, 12.

Propelled, perhaps, by rave reviews, the camp has grown nearly three-fold since its 2019 launch and added about 35% new seats this year while transitioning back to in-person programming for the first time since COVID. Staffing challenges, which have of numerous summer programs across the country, haven’t posed a barrier for Emerging Scholars. In fact, two teachers rather than one work in each classroom under its co-teaching model.

“Many of our teachers come back from year to year because they really respect and value their time with our program,” said Lymer.

As the day winds down, a dozen rising first graders arrive at their last class, Social-Emotional Learning. Shoulders slouch and one student’s head is on his desk. They’ve just watched a on how to keep a growth mindset and their instructor Brother Modlin wakes them up with some call-and-response. 

“It’s not ‘I can’t do it,’ is it class?” He asks the question by trailing off. “It’s ‘I can’t do it…’”

“YET,” they exclaim, picking up their heads and once again regaining attention.

Modlin works as a school counselor during the year, but was previously a therapist at a juvenile detention center in the city. 

“My whole thing as a counselor is about growth mindset,” he told ����Ӱ��. “We’re going to have bad situations, especially in Baltimore. … If I give them a growth mindset, they can rise out of any situation without depending on anyone but themselves.”

The lessons are having an impact for 10-year-old Akorede Adekola.

“I feel really confident and relief [after SEL class],” he said. “I get to show my feelings and get it all out.”

The program’s approach, coupling rigorous academic work with emotional supports, could be a promising model, believes fourth-grade instructor Michelle Brown-Christian. She scoffs at the idea that the curricula, fashioned for gifted children, should be reserved for only a select few.

“This could work for any child that wants to learn,” she said.

New research released last month has offered persuasive new evidence of the potential of summer learning opportunities, particularly in STEM subjects. One, a meta-analysis compiling the findings of dozens of prior studies over the last two years, shows consistent gains in math achievement resulting from student enrollment in summer coursework. Another showed participants in a summer STEM program enjoying significant later-life benefits, including greater success in college and higher earnings. 

The papers emerged just as national leaders made a concerted push to broaden access to summer instruction. In July, to spend more of their federal relief funds on tutoring, afterschool activities, and summer enrichment. Next, the Department of Education the Engage Every Student Initiative, a public-private partnership designed to guide local communities toward evidence-based programming. The administration to highlight the work of schools that have expanded their summer offerings.

The campaign demonstrates the promise that many experts see in summer learning — and the enormous academic challenges facing the nation’s schools after three school years disrupted by COVID-19. Along with extended school days and a stiff dose of high-quality tutoring, researchers and policymakers alike are turning to the traditionally vacant summer months as an untapped resource in the battle against academic erosion. 

Kathleen Lynch, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut and coauthor of the meta-analysis, said the existing research shows not only that summer learning is an effective means of bolstering academic growth, but also a worthy recipient of finite COVID recovery dollars.

“Summer programs provide an opportunity for children to catch up on material they may have missed, or to enrich their learning on new topics aligned with their interests,” Lynch wrote in an email. “I would recommend an effort to replicate successful models over the next few years, as schools and districts continue to combat learning setbacks that children experienced due to the pandemic.”  

Lynch and her co-authors cast a wide net to gather relevant findings from existing research dating between 1998 and 2020, ultimately selecting 37 studies of summer math initiatives that included control groups against whom program effects could be assessed. Programs could be conducted in a school, a community site, or private homes, and while some of the experiments were exclusively math-focused, others provided instruction in other subjects as well.

Participation in the programs significantly lifted children’s math performance. The average effect size of .1 standard deviations (a common measure showing the difference in any group from the statistical mean) in improved standardized test scores compares favorably to other touted learning interventions, such as teacher merit pay and school choice. And the benefits were similar in scope regardless of whether a given program served primarily low-income or high-income children. 

That distinction is critical given the intense diversity of summer learning experiences. Many are operated by school districts on a remedial basis, recruiting (or requiring the participation of) students who struggled academically during the year. Historically, these forms of summer school with poor attendance and low engagement from participants.

By contrast, Lynch noted, “contemporary summer programs increasingly focus on enrichment, hands-on activities, and learning via projects and inquiry.” Such programs, offered electively, are more likely to attract high-achieving pupils from relatively advantaged families.

focused on a particular initiative that attempted to split the difference by signing up high-achieving students from racial or ethnic backgrounds that are historically underrepresented in STEM fields. The program, offered by an elite technical university located in the Northeast, draws a disproportionately nonwhite field of rising high school seniors with top test scores and an average GPA of 3.86. 

Researchers from Columbia Teachers College, the Harvard Kennedy School, and the consulting company Mathematica assessed the effects of three separate varieties of the program: two summer residential periods (one week and six weeks, respectively) on campus, complete with direct coursework in STEM subjects as well as workshops and visits to STEM-focused workplaces, as well as a six-month engagement that was primarily offered to participants online. 

In all, participants from the 2014, 2015, and 2016 cohorts of experiment gained impressive life advantages in the years to come. Across all three summer offerings, students were more likely than members of a demographically similar control group to enroll in college, as well as persist and finish with a degree. Perhaps most importantly, since the program’s top priority was to diversify the STEM pipeline, participants offered seats in the six-week residential experience were 33 percent more likely to graduate in four years with a STEM degree. 

Sarah Cohodes, an associate professor of economics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a co-author of the study, said that the experiment provides evidence of a somewhat rarefied type of summer learning opportunity, tailored to students who were likely to enjoy its full benefits. That makes it a limited, though suggestive, window into what can be expected from summer school generally.

“Does it look like what we’re thinking about when we’re thinking about remediating learning loss? No, it doesn’t,” Cohodes said. “But I think you can see this as an existence proof that, yes, carefully designed programs targeted at the right level for students can make a huge difference for their life trajectories, and it is possible to create summer opportunities that change the lives of students.” 

Intriguingly, the study’s findings in terms of college outcomes aren’t clearly attributable to a particular facet of the college program; for instance, graduation rates after five years with a STEM degree were not significantly different in the one-week experience versus the six-week experience. This suggests that the benefits might be attributable to the simple influence of gathering students from traditionally underrepresented groups together on a prestigious campus, Cohodes argued.

“It’s not clear that the learning that made a difference here was standard, ‘I know more physics than I knew before’-type learning,” she observed. “A lot of it seemed to be around knowledge of the college application process, knowledge of what was out there, peer effects and social networks.”

The development of non-cognitive skills and traits was an explicit point of focus in Lynch’s compilation of summer learning studies. Across a range of 37 non-cognitive outcomes (including mindsets and attitudes, social skills, and academic behaviors like school attendance), summer math programs were associated with positive movement in 27; the average effect size for those outcomes was roughly equivalent to the programs’ effects on math test scores and course grades, with notable reductions to school-year absenteeism.

“The number of studies that measured noncognitive impacts is relatively small, but the evidence we found suggested that there’s unlikely to be a tradeoff between learning and noncognitive outcomes from attending summer programs,” Lynch said.

One example singled out in the meta-analysis was the Horizons National Summer Enrichment Program, an intensive summer intervention serving thousands of low-income pre-K–8 students across dozens of affiliates in 20 states. A commissioned by the organization found that its enrollees were less likely to be chronically absent or repeat a grade. A Horizons affiliate in New Haven, Connecticut, on the first lady’s July tour of summer learning and enrichment programs.

As policymakers at the state and federal levels search for tools to restore the academic growth forfeited during the pandemic, they will have access to thousands of existing summer schools, camps, and enrichment activities targeted toward K-12 students of different ages and achievement levels. National Summer Learning Association CEO Aaron Dworkin, who accompanied First Lady Biden on her visit to Horizons, said in an interview that this panoply of approaches — wedded to ample government support — could make a significant impact in the next few years.

“We have a lot of people who are doing what they think is best, but we can support and train them and invest in them so that they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. A lot of people have tried already and learned the hard way. What’s different is that we have a lot of training, data, intermediaries, and infrastructure to support all kinds of people who are trying to be helpful right now.”

“There is a big learning loss that happened in the last couple of years,” says Gateway to Science Programs Director Arin Casavat. “In the classroom, reaching these kids [taught] by a computer screen for over a year has made engagement a struggle. When you can put them in an informal setting with their interests guiding them, student-centered learning engagement keeps their interest.” 

The state is supporting efforts like these with $200,000 in federal education grants, distributed by the Department of Public Instruction, to increase STEM opportunities throughout North Dakota.

With the difficulties of education in the past two years felt by educators and parents, summer programs with a legitimate level of academic rigor have proven powerful. 

All Gateway to Science camps, which serve students in grades 1 to 5 or grades 6 to 9, have a full range of STEM offerings. “When we went back and talked to the parents, they were looking for things that were academic,” Casavat says. “Parents are starting to see learning loss and their kids want this experience, they want something academic.” 

That’s why the program shifted away from traditional themed camps — LEGO, rockets or space, for example — and focused broadly on science, technology, engineering and math. “I was walking in the classroom, and an educator was teaching about irrational numbers,” Casavat says about a recent camp visit. “There is no way I could have advertised, ‘Hey, kids, come to camp and learn about irrational numbers’ — no one would sign up for that. But we introduced it that day, and some kids were really into it. That is why we opened camp with a sampling and show kids if they are brave enough to step in, we can show them this is pretty cool and this is a fun experience.” 

Using its $20,000 grant, Gateway to Science hired expert staff from the University of North Dakota to develop lessons and was able to bring engaging, hands-on science experiences to students far beyond the state capital, Bismarck, to rural regions across the state.

Parent Alexandria Gibbs, who has a daughter entering fifth grade and a son entering first, says the camp provides a long list of benefits, not least of all the fact that her children discovered a “variety of topics that they have had zero exposure to prior to this program,” whether observing microscopic creatures pulled from a pond or experiencing a flight simulator.

“This program keeps challenging not only the children’s science skills over the summer, helping them stay sharp, but also their reading, math, critical thinking and social skills are being stimulated every day,” she says. 

At camp, Gibbs says, children are less fearful of asking questions and making mistakes since they know they don’t have to remember every detail for a test. They can simply enjoy a “no-stress environment” focused on new subject matter. “They have had interests spiked in the program and inspired them to come up with creative activities at home, such as making a solar-powered oven to cook the whole family s’mores,” she says. “Their brains are continuously thinking about the world around them and contemplating how things work or why they are the way they are.” 

Arlene Wolf, the department’s assistant director of school approval and opportunity, says the summer programming offers a valuable opportunity to not only curb learning loss, but also to expand children’s interests and foundational skills by opening enrollment to underprivileged families. 

In awarding the grants, which were distributed among 11 organizations, the department didn’t just select programs with core academic enrichment activities but wanted to make sure students had a chance to also explore everything from arts to social and emotional well-being, realizing that learning loss may have had an even greater impact outside the core instructional areas. 

This summer alone, North Dakota has reached over 6,000 students. “I believe this program has been extremely successful because of the wide range of programs offered to a variety of students with various interests and needs,” Wolf says. “It is incredibly humbling to visit some of these programs and be able to see how the students benefit directly from the essential services provided by these experts and educators.” 

With the , the White House challenged schools, nonprofits and government youth-serving organizations to leverage $122 billion in American Rescue Plan education funding to invest in proven strategies like high-quality tutoring, mentoring, afterschool programs and summer learning opportunities that address student mental health, enrichment, and academic needs and interests.

Then, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona brought education groups together to announce the Engage Every Student initiative, to find ways to provide the most vulnerable kids with high-quality afterschool and summer programs they might not be able to afford or access otherwise. 

National organizations are mobilizing to respond through the initiative. By acting quickly, creatively and collaboratively, the country can realize the potential of summer and afterschool programming to help children recover from the pandemic.  

Even though most rescue plan funds flow to schools, this work is not their sole responsibility. Summer camps, internship and youth employment programs, colleges, museums, libraries, parks and recreation centers, and public housing authorities all have the expertise, experience, desire and flexibility to address children’s needs.

Student learning takes place in all settings and times of the year, and the National Academies of Sciences has that out-of-school learning activities in all types of settings have the power to change kids’ lives. To heed the calls of the president and secretary of education, community leaders should bring programs, policymakers and other stakeholders together to collaborate, coordinate and pool resources with urgency. Here are three key steps that all communities need to take.

• Know and grow your numbers. Leaders should ask: How many youth are we trying to serve in our community this year across all programs? How many are currently in programs, and how many still need and want to be? By setting a community baseline and collective goals, all partners can see their roles and contributions to the solution. 
• Innovate. Out-of-school programs for low-income kids are not mandatory, and students and families have many options and obligations competing for their time. Kids, especially older youth, vote with their feet and will commit only if they feel connected to caring adults who empower them to learn. Programs must keep adjusting and modifying their models and ask kids for their input to get new ideas. At the National Summer Learning Association, our new Summer Innovation Fellowship provides funding and coaching to educators of color with new project ideas. There is so much untapped talent, and we had hundreds of applications for only a few spots in the program’s first year. 
• Be hyper-collaborative. Everyone in education and youth development wants to work together to help kids. Once the school year starts, however, everyone gets busy and overwhelmed. The summer provides perhaps the best time to build, plan, model and practice multisector partnerships. Educators and community leaders should continue programs that work into the school year. For example, the National Summer Learning Association and the American Camp Association fund partnerships between neighboring school districts and summer camps to collaborate on new orientation programs for students. The districts use American Rescue Plan money to pay teachers to attend the camps and start planning for the school year. This summer, we launched the program with 10 partnerships between camps and school districts and hope to add hundreds more in the future. 

The need is clear. Kids need help and support right now. Summer and afterschool programs are ready to step in and support schools in their efforts. If we do this right, we can ensure that millions of American children get the summer learning opportunities they desperately need.

Even after an additional year to plan and more federal recovery dollars available, districts’ 2022 summer programs are mostly the same as last year, or have decreased in type and scope, based on our review of summer learning plans for 100 of the nation’s large and urban districts.

Among the 50 districts that publicly post budget documents detailing their American Rescue Plan spending, just 28 are directing federal relief money toward summer school this year, as of our review May 10.

Among the 100 districts, about 70 are offering summer programs focused on credit recovery and social and emotional well-being. These counts are down from 2021, when 79 districts offered social and emotional support programs in summer, and 74 offered — which can help students catch up and position them to accelerate their learning in the years to come. in Texas is offering its Summer Academy for high school students who need to recover credits in a blended learning environment. Some districts, like Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina and in California, are allowing students to take credit recovery courses either in person or virtually.��

Compared with last year, 70 districts mention specific social and emotional support programs in their descriptions of summer offerings. That’s a surprising decline from 79 in 2021. 

The number of districts providing summer bridge programs has also declined, according to the publicly available plans we reviewed. Ten fewer districts (35) than last year (45) will offer bridge programs to help students manage key emotional and academic transitions, such as elementary to middle school or middle to high school.

The findings are important because chronic absenteeism and declining enrollment have plagued U.S. schools. More than 1 million students have left public schools since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the latest data from the American Enterprise Institute. The summer offers additional time to re-engage students and families and to connect them to academic recovery programs. 

Fewer districts are providing academic interventions and English learner supports

Of the 100 districts in our database, only 31 say their summer programming will focus on academic interventions, a decline from 48 in 2021. Yet indicates high-poverty districts that went remote in 2020-21 will need to spend nearly all their federal relief funds to recoup lost instructional time.

The among English learners makes it difficult to tell how schools can support their learning and engagement needs over the summer. While some multilingual families experienced gains in their original language due to more time at home during school closures, many districts and stated it was difficult for these families to stay connected to schools virtually and to navigate remote learning. Yet only 33 of 100 districts explicitly state their summer programs will focus on students who are learning English, a decline from 39 in 2021. 

About 40% of districts we are tracking said they are providing summer school programming for students with disabilities. That figure has remained constant from last year to this year — and it is disappointing that we still don’t know how the other 60% of our 100 districts are providing students who have disabilities with the recovery services they need.

Most districts are not using the right data to identify students for additional summer services

Nearly seven in 10 districts have shared no information about how they are identifying students for summer programs this year — the same number as 2021. 

With assessments largely skipped in 2020 and 2021, districts had scant data with which to identify students who needed additional support in the summer. In their absence, some resorted to statistics like grades or attendance. But, with many more tests restarted this year, districts should be able to use these objective measures to flag students in need of more help. Researchers caution against using grades and attendance alone to identify students for summer school, because grades can be subjective and attendance may reflect barriers outside the control of the student, such as a lack of access to reliable transportation.

That’s why it is promising that only three districts reported using grades alone to identify students for summer learning enrollment this year — a decrease from 14 in 2021.

Of the 100 districts, seven are using only standardized assessment data, like interim exams administered during fall, winter and spring, and seven are using a combination of measures to identify students eligible for summer programming. 

In Louisiana, are reviewing high school students’ reading and math test scores to determine whether to refer them for summer classes. Students can enroll in a summer program and retake their end-of-school-year test. 

Some districts are designing summer programs that specifically aim to bolster the skills of students who have fallen the furthest behind. In Texas, is reaching out to middle schoolers who failed two to four core academic courses. Another summer program is aimed at high school students who are at risk of dropping out (based on state criteria) or who have not yet passed at least one end-of-course exam.

Districts should move summer programs from the peripheral to core instructional planning and student re-engagement efforts

The pandemic reinforced the need to treat summer programming as more than an afterthought. Yet despite the urgency to address student learning and well-being year-round and to make up for lost instructional time, most large districts have scarcely improved their summer offerings this year.

Districts are heading into the third summer of the pandemic while sitting on a historic amount of federal relief funding. School system leaders and school boards need to include input from community partners, use only accurate data and keep in mind the need to equitably distribute stimulus funding in their plans to address students’ needs — otherwise, summer programming will continue to be an add-on for only a select few students.

There are many ways to gauge the effectiveness of the joint summer learning program started last year by The Mind Trust and the United Way of Central Indiana. Student scores increased demonstrably, demand for spots this year is surging and teachers are eager to sign up for the five-week program.��

But maybe the clearest indication of Indy Summer Learning Labs’s success is that Indianapolis Public Schools has decided to put all its K-7 students into this program, abandoning typical summer school.

“They were so impressed with the quality of our program that they did away with their program,” said Shannon Williams, the Mind Trust’s executive vice president. The same goes for the smaller Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township, located in Indianapolis’s southwest corner.

Learning Labs was created in January 2021 to address academic ground lost during the pandemic. In less than six months, The Mind Trust and United Way spent $250,000 each to plan the effort, identify curricula, find sites and recruit students and teachers. Some 3,000 kids enrolled in the free, full-day program last summer, including some from both the Indianapolis district and Decatur. Classes were held at 42 sites throughout Indianapolis, using school buildings, churches and Boys and Girls clubs.

Now, both districts have gone all-in. Overall, more than 2,000 students have already signed up for Learning Labs, and total enrollment this year is expected to be 5,000. There are no academic or economic requirements for students, who range from entering first grade to beginning ninth. But the organizers specifically chose high-need neighborhoods for lab locations, said Kateri Whitley, Mind Trust’s director of communications.

A spokesman for Indianapolis Public Schools said the district does refer students with low standardized test scores to the Learning Labs program.

Running from 8 a.m. to at least 4:30 p.m. was important, Williams said, because “so many parents were in a tough situation during the pandemic.” At larger sites, teaching was done in person, but at locations with 20 or fewer students, instruction was delivered online, with in-class aides monitoring the learners.

“Implementing something new in any large district is complex,” said Gina Miller, chief operating officer of central Indiana’s United Way. “We were thrilled by the results we saw through our own pre- and post- tests last year.” She says she hopes that being stricter on attendance and test taking this year will increase what students learn. 

Last year’s students saw an average , while math scores rose an average of 17%. The number of students who scored proficient in English, according to the state’s learning standards, jumped from 7% before the program to 20% afterward, the Mind Trust reported. In math, the increase was even steeper, rising from 6% to 28%.

“These findings offer a glimmer of hope after a challenging year,” said Ann Murtlow, president and CEO of central Indiana’s United Way. “These results show that this pilot can be applied to help future generations of students.” 

The program features curricula created specifically by The Lavinia Group to meet state standards. Students typically work on English and math for four hours each morning, with the afternoon saved for enrichment activities that can include field trips, pool time or other fun programming that keeps the kids engaged, Williams said.

Some teachers are paid $10,000 for their summer commitment, which includes a week of training and roughly five hours of instruction five days a week for five weeks. IPS educators are paid their negotiated rate, which the districts said is less than $10,000. Nearly all the teacher openings for this summer are already filled, said Dani Neal, Learning Labs program director.

“People are excited about the pay,” said Tia Taylor, assistant elementary principal of the PATH school, a K-8 Indianapolis district Innovation School. Last summer’s work even helped a new teacher get some professional development before her first year officially started, Taylor added. “It gave her a leg up.”

As for the students, “Kids are still talking about” the books they read at Learning Labs last summer, she said. All titles were written by authors of color, including many from Ezra Jack Keats, including his most famous, The Snowy Day. The curricula were culturally responsive and seamlessly fit into the courses the school teaches during the regular year, she added. “It’s an extension of who we want to be.”

More than 800 Indianapolis district pupils have already signed up for this year’s Learning Lab. Since it serves only K-8, the district will run two summer programs for older students: one that allows credit recovery for high schoolers, and a bridge program at four schools to give incoming freshmen a head start on their classes. 

Even with all the accolades for Learning Labs, though, the future of the program is in doubt. Beyond $11 million in state money to cover last year and this summer, no funding is secured. 

“We’re in the early stages of determining a sustainability plan,” Williams said. “It’s difficult for this to be funded solely through philanthropy. We will need city and state financial help.” 

After rushing to create last year’s program in a short amount of time, Williams said, she expects this year’s Learning Lab to improve, as the Mind Trust and United Way refine a model that can be used by other groups in different cities. She praised the initiative’s strategy of combining private and public buildings, personnel and students. “It’s so collaborative, I think it’s phenomenal.” 

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Indianapolis Public Schools had decided to put all its K-8 students into the Summer Learning Labs program.

Disclosure: The Mind Trust provides financial support to ����Ӱ��. 

The effort, called “,” is meant to help students bounce back from the pandemic’s lasting impacts, Bloomberg explained in a joint City Hall address with Mayor Eric Adams.

Stalled academic progress through the pandemic is like “the educational equivalent of long COVID,” said Bloomberg. “The good news is we know how to treat it: extra help and intensive instruction. We’ve got to provide it, and we’re going to start right now.”

The investment bolsters an already ambitious plan for summer learning in New York City. Adams previously announced he is working to expand the city’s existing summer school initiative, “Summer Rising,” from 98,000 children last year to this July — the largest in the city’s history. The mayor also plans to for older students from 75,000 to 100,000.

The city’s Summer Rising program is open to all K-8 students, including those who attend publicly funded charters and private schools, but Bloomberg indicated that charter sector leaders are interested in running their own independent programs.

“The charter schools wanted to take a chance, take the opportunity to try what they’ve been doing during the school year for the summer schools, which they didn’t have before,” said Bloomberg.

Mayor Adams’s endorsement of the program from Bloomberg, who announced in 2021 that he plans to spend $750 million to expand charter schools nationwide, represents a break from his predecessor Bill de Blasio, a stark opponent of charter school growth. The announcement marked Bloomberg’s return to City Hall for the first time in eight years.

“I am not going to be caught up in the conversation of separating children based on the names of the schools they are in,” said Adams. “Every young person, whether they are in district schools or charter schools, they deserve to have a quality education.”

The privately funded $50 million sum will cover seats for 25,000 youth at up to $2,000 per student, with grant applications open now through May 4. There are roughly 938,000 students enrolled in traditional NYC public schools and 143,000 attending charters.

“Every school will be eligible and hopefully every school will apply,” explained Howard Wolfson of Bloomberg Philanthropies. “Our expectation is that the vast bulk of the applications will be approved.”

Ben Samuels-Kalow, founder and head of school at Creo College Preparatory Charter School in the Bronx, which currently serves fifth through seventh graders and will scale to eighth grade next year, was thrilled by the Monday announcement and said he plans to apply for a grant in the coming days. His school ran a math-intensive summer program last August, a model that he said provided an “on-ramp” to the school year, rather than the typical July programming, which can be more on an “off-ramp.”

Should his school receive funds through the Summer Boost grant this year, it will allow Samuels-Kalow to provide additional pay to staff who may be struggling with burnout and fatigue, he said.

“Teachers have had the hardest possible last two years of their professional lives,” he said. “[This grant] is giving schools the material ability to compensate teachers for their time.”

Having a critical mass of educators on site for summer learning opportunities, the former added, “is hugely beneficial for kids and for schools.”

Schools may plan programs that serve up to a third of their total enrollment, with a focus on reaching those who have fallen furthest behind during the pandemic, and can request to expand further if funds are left over after the first round of grants are awarded, according to the initiative’s .

Summer Boost will offer free professional development and English and math curricula from Lavinia Group, owned by the for-profit teacher education company Learners Edge, to participating schools, though they may use their own curricula if they prefer.

Grantees must test students at the start and end of their programs, which are required to run at least 20 days, said Wolfson. Bloomberg Philanthropies is contributing about two-thirds of the initiative’s budget and private donors, including the Carson Family Charitable Trust and the Gray Foundation, are covering the rest.

Representatives from the KIPP charter network, which operates 18 public charter schools in the city, declined to comment on whether their campuses intend to take advantage of the Summer Boost program.

School leaders interested in learning more about the program can join one of several offered late April through early May.