Karl Alexander - The Summer Slide: What We Know and Can Do about Summer Learning Loss

One summer when I was Massachusetts secretary of education, I had an opportunity to visit a special summer learning program located on one of the islands in Boston Harbor. After a short ferry trip, I and other policy and philanthropy leaders had a tour of this STEM camp aimed at introducing young people, in this case a limited number of disadvantaged youngsters from the Boston Public Schools, to the wonders of the outdoor world while building their academic skills. We observed what one would see at high-quality camps elsewhere: children engaging in fun and challenging activities with bright, enthusiastic young counselors; discovering nature; forming new relationships; and building skills and knowledge about subjects that they were finding relevant and exciting.

At the end of our tour, the visiting group engaged in a discussion of just how the camp was achieving such positive results. When it came time for me to comment, I respectfully said that I wasnt surprised by the results, because I, like other people of privilege, routinely send my children to similar kinds of camps because they are such positive learning experiences. What interested me about this program was not why and how it was successfulthat was self-evidentbut rather how we might make programs like these broadly available to all disadvantaged children who didnt happen to get access to them through the accident of birth. The interesting and compelling question to me was, How do we make such programs the rule, an entitlement, for inner city kids rather than the luck of the draw?

It seemed to me then and even more so now, having read this compelling set of articles, that the answer to this question should be an urgent policy priority in our quest to build a 21st-century education system that prepares all of our children for success.

If you are concerned, as I am, about the failure of the last quarter centurys school reform to achieve anything close to equitylet alone excellencefor all, you would be hard-pressed, after reading this book, not to conclude that weve grossly underinvested in increasing access to summer learning, to say nothing of out-of-school learning generally. The authors present powerful evidence suggesting that investments in such programs provide a very appealing return in terms of closing opportunity and achievement gaps. If we intend to renew our reform agenda, as we must, summer learning should be a top priority. This volume provides a clear rationale for investment in summer learning as well as a balanced analysis of the ways and means of assuring effective implementation.

This book offers more convincing evidence that learning which occurs in the 80% of childrens waking hours that is spent outside of school, especially in summer, is every bit as important as any in-school learning in determining achievement gaps. With affluent families spending more than ever before on enriching the learning of their children virtually constantly during their out-of-school hours, while poor families find it harder than ever before to make ends meet and have dramatically less time and money to spend on their childrens out of school enrichment, the gaps are growing.

This book makes it clear that if our education reform strategies, as they have to date, focus almost exclusively on improving what happens in school (as important as that may be), then we have little hope of closing persistent achievement gaps which are caused at least as much by the wide and growing opportunity gaps in access to high-quality out-of-school learning. In other words, if we focus reform solely on optimizing the 20% of waking hours that students spend in school, and if we expect improvements in that piece of their life experience to compensate for all the other inequities, we are missing the target while incidentally engaging in an exercise in magical thinking.

For these reasons, I believe we need a national campaign for a new concept: making summer learning, in effect, a third education semester each year. Every child should have access to high-quality learning, and disadvantaged children should be entitled to such access. The third semester should be seen as essential to each educational year. This concept is not about prescribing more formal schooling but rather about providing enrichment, stimulation, and learning opportunities that are often, though not always, aligned with academic goals. Summer enrichment should also be about developing new interests, relationships, social capital, social-emotional learning, and skills. Such an entitlement would not be a mandate forcing all kids to attend summer school but rather a guarantee that every child, irrespective of financial means, would have access to at least 6 weeks of high-quality summer learning and enrichment.

If we have any hope of realizing our education reform ideals and educating all students to the point where they are prepared to be successful in college and careers, then we have to create a third semester. We can no longer treat summer learning as incidental, an accident of birth; rather, we must see it as an essential ingredient in achieving student success at scale. It isnt something nice to do but something we must do, as this book so effectively illustrates. If were serious about closing achievement gaps, summer enrichment must become an entitlement. Obviously, this will require more resources to support such additional learning opportunities, at least for those who dont ordinarily have access to them, but such an investment is one of several critical features of the pathway to all means all. If federal, state, and local policymakers fail to make such investments, then we should just openly admit that our best efforts at school reform will be insufficient to close achievement gaps. We will need to be resigned to perpetual achievement gaps and all the attendant consequences.

My daughter attends a school that is part of an urban school system. She is a privileged child who enjoys a rich buffet of enrichment opportunities every summer. She is stimulated and connected to all kinds of valuable learning opportunities, from camps, to tutoring, to sports, to travel, and exposure to all kinds of interesting people. She attends school side by side with youngsters who, through no fault of their own, have no access to such opportunities. Her classmate may live in a dangerous neighborhood and have no access to affordable summer programs; his mother may insist that, to be safe, he must stay in the apartment all day until she returns from work. His summer enrichment opportunities will be severely constrained by isolation and the shortcomings of television and, even if hes lucky, video games. Is it any surprise, then, that his academic trajectory will typically differ widely from that of my daughter when these kinds of opportunity gaps persist, day after day, summer after summer, for the 13 years of K12 education and throughout the 80% of their waking hours that students spend outside of school?