For many young people, summertime is an opportunity to play, explore, and have fun outside of the confines of school walls. We adults know that there's a little more to it than that! Summer is an essential opportunity for youth to have experiences that enrich and complement the school year and promote learning and development.
Unfortunately, we also know that not every child has this opportunity. As school doors close, many children struggle to access learning opportunities, and without these ongoing opportunities to acquire knowledge and practice essential skills, children fall behind over the summer months, a troubling reality referred to as the "summer slide."
Students typically score lower on tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on those same tests at the beginning of summer. And while most students experience some learning loss during the summer, this loss is far greater for low-income students, who lose more than two months' worth of math skills and reading achievement over the summer months. When this pattern continues throughout the elementary school years, lower income youth fall more than two and a half years behind their more affluent peers by the end of fifth grade...
