Ready for Fall? Near-Term Effects of Voluntary Summer Learning Programs on Low-Income Students’ Learning Opportunities and Outcomes

This six-year study of summer learning programs in five urban areas revealed that while students who attended summer learning programs performed better in math, they did not experience near-term benefits in reading or see significant improvement in social and emotional outcomes compared to their peers. However, the study identified key factors linked to reading achievement. Students whose summer reading teacher had just taught the sending or receiving grade during the school year performed better on the reading test than did students with teachers unfamiliar with their grade level. Students whose reading teachers scored higher on RAND’s measure of instructional quality outperformed students with lower-scoring teachers. Finally, students in summer sites rated by teachers as having strong behavior management policies and well-behaved students outperformed students in the control group in reading.