As U.S. students in August and September began their fourth school year under the shroud of COVID-19, researchers from NWEA, the nonprofit behind the widely used MAP Growth assessment, took an early look at their achievement. The data suggest that gaps between pre- and post-pandemic performance have been slowly shrinking. 

Among the biggest contributors, for reasons researchers don’t quite understand: In 2022, the typical “summer slide” didn’t slide quite as much, giving kids a small advantage as the school year began.

The new findings are “evidence of resiliency on the part of students,” said Karyn Lewis, director of NWEA’s Center for School and Progress. “I think we’re seeing some buoyancy in terms of students’ achievement levels. That’s a testament to simply getting back in the classroom, being reconnected to their peers and their teachers.”

But in a more sobering finding, NWEA found that the youngest students in the study — third-graders who were kindergarteners when the pandemic closed their schools — showed the largest reading achievement gaps and the least “rebounding” from previous tests.

In reading, third-graders reduced their widest achievement gaps by just 10%, far less than other groups. By contrast, sixth-graders’ gaps shrank by 38%. The research found similarly small reductions for third-graders in math.

“That suggests to me it was really detrimental for those kiddos to be doing Zoom school in kindergarten to pick up on some of those foundational reading skills,” said Lewis. “And then for kids that return to the classroom in first grade, imagine trying to learn phonics with your teacher wearing a mask.”

These young students’ reading improvement was slower than their math improvement, researchers found. And they estimate that it will take them at least five years to fully recover from the pandemic in both reading and math, longer than nearly any other group studied except current eighth-graders. Given the five-year time horizon, many of those students may never fully get up to speed in either subject by the time they finish high school, they warn. 

The new findings add to data NWEA released last month that showed achievement losses in the 2021-2022 school year disproportionately affected low-performing students, whose skills have languished since the pandemic, unlike that of high-performing students. At the time, Lewis told ����Ӱ��, “If we think of the range of test scores, we see that the ceiling has remained stable. But the bottom has dropped out.” 

Meanwhile, the new study found, the highest-performing 10% actually made more progress toward academic mastery than would have been expected absent COVID.

“In study after study we are seeing clear evidence that while some students are getting back on track quickly, far too many are not,” said of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at Arizona State University. “We’re also seeing clear evidence that schools and districts are really struggling to meet student needs.” 

Federal ESSER funds, slated to help schools recover from the pandemic, are due to run out over the next three years — and schools must figure out how they’re going to spend the money by September 2024. 

“I think this is a group we really need to keep our eye on and make sure that elementary teachers that are serving them now actually know how to help them catch up,” NWEA’s Lewis said. “You can imagine the trickle-down effect it has if these kids continue to struggle in reading.”

In addition to hurting students who had just transitioned to kindergarten, the pandemic deeply affected those who were even younger — from newborns to four-year olds, said Michelle Kang, CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. As they prepare for elementary school, those students are going to need supportive teachers, she added, who “help them build on their resilience and thrive in academic and social emotional contexts.”

W. Steven Barnett, senior co-director and founder of the National Institute for Early Education Research, said it makes sense that the youngest students have struggled in reading. “If you think about where kids learn math and reading, the home environment has a bigger impact on reading than math. So the extent to which the home environment was also negatively impacted by the pandemic, you’d expect that to have a bigger impact on reading, a bigger impact on younger kids.”

While he’s encouraged by the summer findings, Barnett noted that a lot of federal COVID relief funding remains unspent, so it’s difficult to draw a direct line between federal aid and improvements in achievement. But he said schools should not waste time figuring out how to spend their relief money going forward, whether it’s for summer programs or intensive tutoring. “There are a bunch of tutoring programs that have been proven highly effective that schools could adopt that identify the kids who are behind,” he said.

A number of programs offer one-on-one instruction and don’t require licensed teachers for implementation. Actually, Barnett said, they offer training for volunteer and paraprofessional tutors. He also suggested that student-teachers could step in to fill a tutoring void in a tight teacher labor market. 

CRPE’s Lake said the new data suggests one clear conclusion: “Now is the time to shift course. We must start acting like this is a national emergency and bring new solutions to the table. We cannot continue to ignore the mounting evidence that we are failing to give this generation of students a solid foundation for the future.”

A ‘dampened’ summer slide

NWEA’s Lewis said the overall upward progress among the students studied is in part due to what she called a “less-worse slide” over the summer, compared to typical years.

And while it might seem logical to attribute that progress to intensive, ESSER-supported summer learning efforts, like Barnett, Lewis cautioned against trying to find “a thread of causality” in the findings. 

Actually, she said, other research suggests that many of the available summer remediation efforts “were probably not taken advantage of to the extent that would really lead to the results that we’re seeing here.”

But Lewis said it’s important to put both the progress and challenges in perspective. Those who would call the nation’s third-graders “a lost generation” — as well as those who don’t think the ongoing gaps are a big deal — are both missing the larger point.

“Like most things, I think somewhere in the middle is where we need to find ourselves,” she said. What may be most important is “shining light on which kids have been harmed the most” and serving them in a less standardized, more personalized way — for instance, through a “layered approach” to tutoring, summer programming, and other strategies. 

“There will be no silver bullet,” Lewis said.

“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.’”

This July, the site coordinator with America Scores Los Angeles was back at Palms Elementary School, helping to lead one-on-one matches on the blacktop and reminding participants to keep their heads up as they chase the ball.

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He knows the value of the program, which combines the world’s most popular sport with literacy and cultural activities for children whose families can’t afford to play in a competitive league. He used to be one of those students.

“Some of the coaches I had were huge role models,” said Aquino, 28, now earning a degree in child psychology while working as a shift supervisor for In-N-Out, California’s iconic burger chain.

The program has many of the elements that experts look for in a high-quality summer experience — a blend of enrichment and academic support, a focus on relationships and a dedicated staff. Aquino isn’t America Scores L.A.’s only long-time staff member. A Palms Elementary special education assistant has been leading the academic side of the program for almost 20 years. That stability was especially important this year after months of missed in-person learning, said Brodrick Clarke, vice president of programs for the National Summer Learning Association.

“Programs that have long-standing relationships with families and are embedded in communities are thriving,” he said.

But in a year when parents and educators are looking to summer school to fill some of the gaps students have experienced because of the pandemic, some districts have struggled to find enough teachers to meet the demand. Districts are doing their best to hit moving targets around COVID safety, parent demand and the Delta variant, Clarke said. But even with dedicated federal funding for summer learning, newer programs have a “growth curve,” he said.

A July 29 from the Afterschool Alliance showed that more than half of programs have waitlists this summer, and 57 percent of the responding providers said they had concerns about their ability to hire enough staff members.

‘A pivotal year’

That means some students have been shut out of learning recovery efforts this summer.

Bryan Walsh, whose son Leo will be a third grader this fall in the Arlington Public Schools in Virginia, is among the parents who counted on their children participating in a summer program only to have it cancelled due to a lack of teachers.

In April, Walsh received notice that his son, who receives special education services, was automatically eligible for summer school. So he unenrolled Leo from camps offered by the local parks and recreation department, where he had already paid deposits.

But in mid-May, another email from the district stated that Leo’s program, which targeted students with special needs, had been cancelled. District spokesman Andrew Robinson said the district offered incentives— $1,000 for teachers and $500 for assistants — but still wasn’t able to recruit enough teachers.In the meantime, other camps had filled up and Walsh scrambled to find open slots. (He found space in cooking and musical theater camps, but said, “these aren’t academically oriented.”)

After a year in which Leo never had more than two shortened days of in-person learning a week, Walsh said he can’t imagine his son hasn’t fallen behind. But for a child who “couldn’t get out of the car fast enough” when schools reopened in March, he said was more concerned about him missing the “social-emotional interactions that are part and parcel of an 8-year-old’s existence in such a pivotal year.”

Robinson said 850 teachers and staff are still serving more than 4,600 students this summer and that the district will make “necessary and informed decisions as next summer approaches to further strengthen our program.”

‘Take out the friction’

Aaron Dworkin, CEO of the National Summer Learning Association, understands why districts have experienced challenges.

“Teachers are so exhausted, and they deserve to be,” he said. Districts have faced the opposite problem as well — parents registered their children, but then didn’t show up. The good news, he said, is that states and districts have three more summers to use the $30 billion set aside in the American Rescue Plan for summer and afterschool programs.

“We don’t need to try and make up for everything in six weeks,” he said.

Even so, there’s a sense of urgency about this summer. from nonprofit assessment provider NWEA shows students, on average, made much less progress in the 2020-21 school year than their peers did before the pandemic. Additionally, the and Dworkin’s have launched efforts to support states and districts in ramping up summer programs.

Dworkin said there are ways to make summer learning enticing for both teachers and students.

Setting up under a shady tree is one way.

That’s what Matthew Hathaway, a fourth-grade teacher at Owatin Creek Elementary School in Reading, Pennsylvania, has been doing since 2004. He began offering six students some extra help over the summer from his parents’ back porch, combining math and reading lessons with science activities in a nearby park.

Other teachers asked if they could join him with their students, and prior to the pandemic, his “passion project” had grown to include 120 teachers from 12 schools serving 1,500 students. While his nonprofit is called , the off-site locations include libraries and YMCAs. This year, with help from federal relief funds, the district has added breakfast, lunch and field trips.

Hathaway agreed with Dworkin that teachers especially needed time to recuperate this year. That’s why his part-time model, outside of the classroom, is attractive to teachers, he said. “Kids don’t want to be there all day either.”

Michele Stratton signed up her 9-year-old son Keegan for the program this year so he could get used to socializing with peers again and get some extra help on reading.

“It’s just a different atmosphere when you’re at a park with your friends, rather than sitting on the couch being forced to read by mom,” she said. She recently dropped by to see her son’s small group using different units of measurement to estimate the length of a slide. “In the classroom, you’re limited. Outside, the world is just open to these kids.”

During the school year, some nonprofits revamped their programs to create pods so students — especially those whose parents were essential workers — could have a safe place for remote learning. In San Francisco, the same community-based organizations that provided those “hubs” are now helping to meet the demand for summer learning, despite many obstacles those efforts faced during the school year.

A on the hubs described the political tensions between the school district, the city, the teachers union and community organizations that complicated the push to give the most vulnerable students a place to learn while schools were closed. The fact that non-union staff at the hubs provided in-person services to students was one point of contention for union supporters. “Finding ways around the union, in their view, amounted to carrying water for anti-union politicians,” the report said.

But now, new relationships between principals and afterschool providers have “transformed the conversation” about how they can work together, said Stacey Wang, CEO of the San Francisco Education Fund, which funded the report.

The partnerships have continued, with the school district providing about 10,000 slots for and the organizations that ran the hubs serving another 15,000 students.

Another challenge for districts — especially this year — is ensuring students who need support the most are the ones signing up for programs. Technology can help.

“The funding is there, but you have to take out the friction for districts,” said Rod Hsiao, who launched InPlay, a nonprofit that uses text alerts in multiple language to inform parents about free summer and afterschool opportunities and then simplifies the registration process. The program ensured “that our highest priority students were effectively recruited during our challenging pandemic year,” said Julie McCalmont, coordinator of expanded learning for the Oakland Unified School District.

But it’s what takes place when students arrive at those programs that Clarke, with the National Summer Learning Program, was evaluating when he recently visited Palms Elementary to see America Scores L.A. — one of six finalists for a national Excellence in Summer Learning . The honor recognizes providers that reach underserved students and make extra efforts to involve parents.

“I was blown away,” Clarke said. He was impressed by how active the students were in drills, despite wearing masks in the heat, and how they pitched in to gather equipment and hand out water and snacks.

But he was more taken with what was happening inside the classroom, where teaching assistant and history aficionado Oscar Gonzalez, posed “masterful” open-ended questions to students about what they think the White House looks like, why we shoot off fireworks on the 4th of July and why George Washington became the first president instead of a king.

As students began sketching and writing about their interpretations of the White House, Gonzalez gavea rising first-grader some extra help with letters and counting to 20. L.A. ‘s program, Clarke said, demonstrates that establishing connections between staff and students are essential before focusing on content.

“These are things I train practitioners to do all the time,” he said. He got the sense the soccer program’s staff members knew intuitively how to engage the students because they’ve known them for years. “It felt very authentic.”

For so long, educators and youth advocates have dreaded summer slide, the deterioration of skills over summer, when children without access to enriching activities fall further behind their peers. This is the year to change that. The pandemic is widening the racial equity gap for children of all socio-economic backgrounds — it’s the perfect opportunity to extend the traditional school year and have academic enrichment this summer that can close this persistent divide.

Picture this: With all the disruption of this COVID-plagued school year, students could get another several weeks of learning, probably outside, in camp-like settings, where they could creatively work on math, science, writing, reading and the arts, get meals and snacks every day and engage in physical activity. It’s the right time and the right solution for bridging the gap, particularly for Black and Latino students.

It’s also a long-needed solution for working parents. Many have struggled to keep their jobs and paychecks during the last year. So, come summer, if students go to vigorous, engaging programs to catch up or continue learning, then their parents can work with less worry about their children. That valuable extra time can make up for what was missed amid the frenzy of on-again, off-again remote learning, hybrid classrooms and in-person disruptions. With about 20 percent of Boston public school students not even logging into school, there is a large population that would benefit from more structured time.

My organization, YMCA of Greater Boston, along with our partner groups — Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA), The BASE and Latinos for Education — have a model for this and believe it could be the beginning of a much-needed reimagining of education in Boston.

We actually came together before the pandemic, encouraged by local philanthropists to take a “moonshot” approach to more equitable education in the city by forging a collaboration between nonprofits and the school district. But when the pandemic struck, our Community Learning Collaborative had a chance for a test run.

Each collaborative partner is guided by a leader of color who has demonstrated a longstanding commitment to education, youth development and community engagement. We share our talents, expertise and resources to provide comprehensive and equitable learning opportunities for low-income students and families in Boston.

We are currently running 12 equity pods, organized by age and grade level, with 125 students spending the day with an educator in a community-based setting within walking distance of home. Each location is equipped with high-speed Internet, laptop computers for those who don’t have them and headsets so students can focus on their classwork with their Boston Public School teachers. We know from students, parents, teachers and even grandparents that young people are excelling and thriving. Now, we want to keep going and take the lessons we are learning into summer with fun, academically enriching programs at facilities run by the YMCA, The Base and IBA.

We are seeing the impact of high-quality academic support, social-emotional development, health and wellness, recreation, arts, movement and food in a fun and engaging environment. Students, parents and teachers report that they like the pods and students are excelling, keeping up with their schoolwork and enjoying learning. Smaller settings with individualized attention are working to meet students’ needs. Our whole-child approach includes culturally appropriate curricula, taught and supported by leaders and teachers of color, which contributes to positive self-identities for children of color. Students see themselves and their experiences reflected by the caring adults around them. We are also combating food insecurity and hunger by providing healthy and nutritious meals and snacks.

To gather data, we have brought in Bellwether Education Partners survey students, parents and teachers, so we have a complete analysis of how our pods are working and what we can learn from them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated disparities experienced by low-income Black and Latino children. These inequities often result from limited access to academic, enrichment and out-of-school opportunities available to children of wealthier households. As a result, Black and Latino children are less likely to graduate from high school, attend college, secure gainful employment and accumulate wealth — all outcomes that can be mitigated with equitable access to educational opportunities. Children’s potential is equally distributed, but opportunity is not.

We are reimagining public education in Boston. Our resolve is fueled by the fierce urgency of now and knowing that if society fails to educate all of its children, then it has failed all of its children.

James Morton is president and CEO of the YMCA of Greater Boston. Community Learning Collaborative leaders Amanda Fernandez, CEO and co-founder of Latinos for Education; Robert Lewis, president and founder of The BASE; and Vanessa Calderón-Rosado, executive director of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción, also contributed to this essay.

According to the Brookings Institution, children from underserved communities generally keep up academically with those from more privileged neighborhoods during the school year: The loss is due to the time outside school.

Since March, millions of children and adults have had nothing but time outside school and the summer slide has morphed into what researchers are calling the COVID-19 slump — schools closed; teachers and schools thrust online; preschools, daycares and kindergartens closed or dealing with drastically reduced staff and hours — a nerve-wracking recipe for academic loss.

On Florida’s Gulf Coast, the Suncoast Campaign for Grade-Level Reading had been asking what more it could do to combat the summer slide. For several summers, the organization has sponsored its , which engaged various in a four-county region in to read at least six books at their level over the summer.

Over the years, the program has been able to aggregate data for cohorts of children who have participated in the summer challenge and found that they had lost on average only two weeks of reading skills over the summer, rather than the two and a half months that is the normal summer slide. Keeping children reading over the summer made a measurable difference in their reading retention.

“We had been looking at how we might provide quality instruction to the folks on the front lines who were working with the children to keep that momentum going,” says Beth Duda, director of the , a community-wide effort to help children succeed in life by ensuring they’re reading at grade level. The campaign is part of a nationwide movement and focuses on four counties in Florida — Charlotte, DeSoto, Manatee and Sarasota — to deliver support and resources to children in the Suncoast region.

“We had been thinking about creating some brief instructional videos (on books in the program) that a camp counselor at Parks and Rec could look at in the morning, for example, and say, ‘Oh, that’s what this book is about.”

And then? The pandemic hit and it quickly became apparent that whatever plans had been in the works would need some nimble rethinking.

“Many of our families who had been able to participate in summer programs before had very different concerns this summer — either about their health and safety or their economic situation. So, we knew we needed to create a way to directly interact with the families.”

Out of that necessity, the very cool program was born, and what was originally a summer reading program for the Suncoast counties is now being offered as open-source material for anyone, anywhere — families, teachers, daycare centers — who want to use the material.

The centerpiece of the program is a series of 100 webisodes designed to encourage a love of reading. Libraries of webisodes for each grade, PreK through third grade, feature books specially selected by an engagement team composed of teachers, volunteers with the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, reading specialists and parents. Duda asked each person to provide a list of 20 books that they would recommend to any child. In addition to those lists, the team researched not only Caldecott and Newberry Award winners, but Coretta Scott King Award-winning books, award-winning science books and any others they thought might provide the just-right material for the region’s diverse population.

“It was important to us that no matter what crayon you held up and said, ‘This is the color of my skin,’ you would see yourself reflected in our selection of books.”

“By the time we went through that process, we had quite a rich list. Next, we have a very robust program here, so we did some research to source its for each of the books that align with the executive function skills we’re promoting with Mind in the Making.”

Then, it was time to start shooting the webisodes. Each webisode features a special guest sharing their reasons why the featured book is cool. Duda’s team felt it was important not only to have someone who could discuss the book, but with whom the children and families could connect.

“Because of the abrupt way our school closures happened, children left for spring break thinking they would be coming back to school the following week and then they never came back to school,” Duda says. “We were hearing from many of the teachers and families that they were feeling this odd sense of non-closure. Even if the children were seeing their teachers virtually, it wasn’t quite the same thing. So, we wanted to make sure some of the guests were highly recognizable to the children.

“One strategy was to identify special teachers, principals and assistant principals who would have high visibility with everyone in the school. We also wanted this program to be engaging for the adults and recognized that we had an opportunity to broaden the feeling of community by inviting other members of the community to be guests on the show.”

Guests included a local meteorologist, an astronaut, the chief of police and one of the principal dancers of the Sarasota Ballet, as well as staff from several local museums, the Selby Botanical Gardens and different cultural venues and offerings in the region.

Duda hosted the webisodes, her husband Bill Wagy served as director and lead editor, and another Suncoast Campaign for Grade-Level Reading engagement team member, Kelli Karen Smith, put her experience as an Actors’ Equity stage manager to work and created a shooting schedule that allowed the team of three to tape 10 episodes in a five-hour day.

Each of the series’ 100 webisodes is accompanied by supporting materials and offers an age-appropriate activity guide with step-by-step instructions for each featured book. One of Duda’s favorites is the book “Tornado, ”By Betsy Byars and Doron Ben-Ami, about a dog who was found during a tornado, with local meteorologist John Scalzi as the special guest. The activity was to create a tornado in a jar and Duda says her inbox has been full of photos and videos of children swirling liquid in jars to get the vortex circulating.

Another was the book “More-Igami,” by Dori Kleber and G. Brian Karas, with special guest Kuniko Yamamoto, a local origami artist. She did a family event in which she led families who have been participating in THIS BOOK IS COOL! in the folding of a really aerodynamic paper airplane.

“Mine flew further than any paper airplane I’d ever folded before,” Duda says with a laugh. “It’s been so much fun to see the families on social media posting pictures of them flying their paper airplanes. I got an email from one mother who said her house was now full of paper airplanes, and in parenthesis underneath, wrote, ‘And I love it!’”

The fully funded THIS BOOK IS COOL! and Duda was able to secure enough copies of the 100 books selected that each child who participated from home in the summer reading program received each of the two books for their grade level each week. Duda thought originally that they might have 500 children participating but quickly discovered that more than 1,000 kids had enrolled in the program causing the team to scramble to increase the orders of books.

The families could pick up books at a number of community locations that agreed to partner with the program and if their circumstances prevented that, Suncoast team members who lived close would drop off the books to them.

“We developed THIS BOOK IS COOL! to increase our family and community engagement in the overall campaign for grade-level reading. We didn’t want it to be just a book drop off or ‘Here’s your free stuff,’ but an opportunity to have conversations with the family, to see what their situation is and how they’re doing.

“One of the questions we’ve been asking our families at the time they register is what their greatest joys have been and also what their greatest challenges have been. Almost universally, people have said their joy has come from being able to spend more time with their families and be less busy in the outside world. I think that’s worth noting.”

Duda says her team is continuing to look at how they can leverage the material to be deeply useful to families and caregivers in these extraordinary times. Some of the books have a strong emotional-learning component, she says, and the team is considering putting together lesson plans that area church groups and providers might be able to use for family engagement. They’re also looking at using some of the webisodes that can help develop early learning skills and offering them through mothers’ groups, local health clinics or local WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program offices.

Though Suncoast can’t provide free books to others outside the community who accesses the webisodes, every community has foundations and organizations that might be able to support the effort to put books in the hands of the community’s children. Duda says she studiously kept the price of the books at or under $4 and sourced them through various providers, including Scholastic, First Book and the Bulk Book Store.

Though THIS BOOK IS COOL! has undergone a few changes from the original plan, its transformation is the kind of inspiring, spontaneous solution that communities throughout the nation are inventing to keep learning happening and children and families served in the worst of times. For Duda and her team, there was no question that they would rise to the occasion.

“We had to do something,” she says. “We couldn’t just sit and watch. We knew we needed to take action, so we did.”

“Summer is a great time for parents and caregivers to do fun activities with children that can also promote learning. For example, cooking together and talking about measurement can connect math concepts for children. Helping children do art projects that involve marking out shapes with tape and then coloring them in with chalk is a good way to talk about geometry and shapes. Planting seeds with children is a great way to talk about science and how things grow. Finally, writing a children’s guide to summer fun together is a great way to promote writing and literacy and have fun together.”

—Megan McClelland, director of Oregon State University’s

“For young children, the most important skills that parents can build all come packaged in playful learning.��Building with blocks and doing puzzles promotes spatial reasoning, a critical component of math. Playing games like Simon Says and engaging in pretend play fosters executive function skills (e.g., planning, self-control, memory). And talking about emotions and other mental states when watching movies or reading books can help boost social-emotional skills such as empathy and altruism.”

—Helen Shwe Hadani, fellow at Metropolitan Policy Program, , The Brookings Institution

“There’s a well-documented antidote to slow and reverse the summer slide: kids who read, beat the summer slide! When kids don’t read over the summer, they fall further behind. The best thing that parents and caregivers can do is to let kids select books that interest them. And adults need to get involved, too, by modeling the behavior. So set aside family reading time. There is nothing better than ending your day by sharing stories with a child you love; it will change their lives—and yours, too!”

—Kyle Zimmer, president, CEO and co-founder of

“Parents can prevent their child’s summer learning loss by reading a book every day. They can reread a child’s favorites often and add different storybook genres, such as fairy tales, folktales, fantasy and fables. Families can also engage in book talk during and after reading, act out the most exciting parts, make silly character voices, and discuss reasons why the book should become a new favorite. All these activities will build comprehension and vocabulary.”

—Kathy Hollowell-Makle, executive director of

“There are three simple activities parents and caregivers of young children can do to slow and reverse the effects of summer slide: (1) Talk together and use words to describe the things you do and see around you; (2) read books every day and take time to discuss the stories and characters; and (3) sing your favorite songs. Children are naturally curious and love to play, so parents can follow their child’s interests to spark new conversations, stories, songs and games to enjoy together!”

—Jane Park, director of , the early learning program of the

“Young children learn through play. Seize the teachable moments that arise through your day together to read street signs, talk about the emotions they are feeling and measure out ingredients. Let children guide the learning you encourage so it is a joy, not a chore, for them.”

—David Lawrence Jr., Chair of

“Investigate programming options in your area; we’re hearing about many districts and non-profits across the country planning special programs this summer. Don’t forget your local library’s programs, and be sure your child is checking out books and you’re talking with them about the books. If you’re not sure, a librarian can help you choose age-appropriate titles. And always, always, always, talk with your children about anything and everything.”

—Claudia Miner, executive director & co-founder of

“Parents should make sure they approach reading as fun reading, meaning let kids pick any type of book they want about any topic they are interested in and letting them choose the genre—graphic novels, chapter books, picture books, etc. The other thing that can help with the summer slide in terms of math is playing more board games at home, particularly those that involve counting money. But there are also board games that are specifically focused on math activities. Another important thing to remember is that having family conversations about world events and history are important ways to foster children’s critical thinking skills and language expression.”

—Stephanie Currenton-Jolly, director of