What Makes Summer Programs Work for Middle Schoolers?
Tiffany Gueye's Commentary, Education Week
We know that summer learning can increase student achievement. But when it comes to middle school students, the question is: How can we continuously improve our approach to such programs and produce the greatest return on investment for children, families, and schools?
Three years ago, the nonprofit organization that I head, BELL, or Building Educated Leaders for Life, was given the opportunity to find answers to this question through a Social Innovation Fund grant from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and the Corporation for National and Community Service. For our investigation, we conducted a randomized controlled trial to better understand how and why summer learning yields positive student outcomes.
Our study was particularly important, we knew, because little evidence exists about effective learning models for middle school students. MDRC, the research firm responsible for conducting the evaluation, designed the research to learn more about how summer learning programs can improve the academic achievement of middle school students, and to better understand the context in which summer programs are implemented.
The findings were informative. First, they showed that the impact of summer learning may be greater on students’ math achievement than on reading achievement. Data also showed, moreover, that it is possible to deliver high-quality programming that middle school students will voluntarily attend at a high rate....
