\n<\/p>\n
Nearly six years on from the start of the COVID pandemic, many of the academic recovery plans districts put in place haven\u2019t shown big returns and student achievement remains stubbornly low.<\/p>\n
Several studies of large-scale tutoring programs, for instance, have shown that initiatives didn\u2019t move the needle on student outcomes at all\u2014in part due to logistical challenges that prevented the one-on-one instruction from being as effective as promised. <\/p>\n
Those problems haven\u2019t plagued summer school to the same extent, though, a new research brief finds. Even when districts designed summer programs that didn\u2019t meet recommendations for best practice, participation still led to small but significant improvements in students\u2019 math skills.<\/p>\n
The finding suggests that summer school might be more \u201cforgiving\u201d of implementation difficulties than some other academic recovery interventions, said Emily Morton, a lead research scientist at NWEA, and an author on the report.<\/p>\n
The brief summarizes results from the Road to Recovery research-practice partnership\u2014a collaboration between 10 large school districts and researchers at the assessment and research company NWEA, CALDER at the American Institutes of Research, and Harvard University. It draws conclusions from published studies of programs across these districts, which collectively serve close to 450,000 students. <\/p>\n
On average, students in summer school made about 2-3 weeks more progress in math than similar peers who didn\u2019t attend. There were no statistically significant differences in reading. Still, these results are smaller in magnitude than those of pre-pandemic studies of summer school.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easy to write off this type of summer school impact that was small in math as sort of inconsequential,\u201d Morton said. But that\u2019s not necessarily the right framing, she said.<\/p>\n
Summer school programs have the potential to serve large groups of students, meaning that even small improvements can \u201craise the tide\u201d for a district, she said.<\/p>\n
Summer school is one of the most popular tools districts employ for academic intervention. Almost three-quarters of district superintendents said that they offer programs for students who qualify for remediation, in a 2025 survey from AASA, the School Superintendents Association, Gallup, and the National Summer Learning Association. <\/p>\n
Pre-pandemic research drew out some best practices for program design: Summer school should last between 4-6 weeks and offer 90 minutes of math and 120 minutes of reading daily.<\/p>\n
Districts in the Road to Recovery research usually fell short of these benchmarks. Most programs were between 15-20 days spread over the course of 3-4 weeks, offering between 45 minutes to two hours of academic instruction in math and reading daily.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible that because these post-pandemic programs didn\u2019t meet a minimum duration threshold, they weren\u2019t as effective as pre-pandemic programs, said Morton. Or, the muted outcomes could be related to other factors that set COVID-era instruction apart, that the studies didn\u2019t account for, she added.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Morton said, a layered approach to academic interventions might be most effective in supporting all students. That could look like continuing summer school, while also working to make other programs, like tutoring, align more closely to best practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had these huge, systematic drops in achievement, and the response probably needs to have two pieces: some supports that are targeted to those most in need, and some that are designed to boost everyone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Despite the end of federal pandemic-relief aid that supported summer school among other interventions, the majority of districts in the AASA survey said they planned to continue offering summer programs at the same level, relying on money from district budgets and grants. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nearly six years on from the start of the COVID pandemic, many of the academic recovery plans districts put in place haven\u2019t shown big returns and student achievement remains stubbornly low. Several studies of large-scale tutoring programs, for instance, have shown that initiatives didn\u2019t move the needle on student outcomes at all\u2014in part due to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[79,650,22160,585,2305,348,334,111],"class_list":{"0":"post-41711","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-arent","9":"tag-boost","10":"tag-gainseven","11":"tag-learning","12":"tag-perfect","13":"tag-programs","14":"tag-school","15":"tag-summer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}