New State Education Standard Explores Ways to Expand Access to Summer Learning

Alexandria, VA – The National Association of State Boards of Education today released the new issue of its journal, The State Education Standard, themed “Summer Learning: Engaging All Students.” The issue focuses on how and why state boards of education should increase the breadth and depth of students’ summer learning opportunities.

Children lose ground in learning if they have do not build skills over the summer months—teachers on average spend a month of the new school year re-teaching old material. Summer learning loss is most acute for low-income youth. For this reason, addressing summer learning policies offers a one-two punch: State policymakers who increase the quality of summer programs and the number of students they serve can make headway on narrowing the achievement gap in their states.

And the time to plan is now, argue Standard authors—well before the last bell of the school year rings.

In the cover story “Accelerating Student Success,” Sarah Pitcock and Bob Seidel of the National Summer Learning Association highlight the important role state policymakers play in developing a vision for summer learning, funding it, and making sure summer programs align with other education objectives.

Another article by RAND’s Catherine H. Augustine and Jennifer Sloan McCombs look at initiatives in six urban districts that yield lessons on how a state’s districts can get a handle on planning, curriculum, teacher selection and training, and funding. And Learning Forward’s Fred Brown offers a straightforward recounting of all the reasons a focus on summer learning is good for students and teachers.

“We have known for a long time that students’ lack of access to summer learning costs in terms of time spent relearning material taught in the previous school year,” says NASBE Executive Director Kristen Amundson. “Now more states are realizing they cannot make headway on bridging the achievement gap if they do not first focus on making engaging learning opportunities available to all students in the summer months.”

Featured

  • Designing School Spaces for A++ Performance

    In recent years, the educational world has gained greater appreciation for the ways a space’s aesthetics, just like its acoustics, can positively impact educational outcomes. Consequently, engineering, designing, and constructing a school environment demands acoustics to be equally an art and a science, requiring architects and designers to see with their ears, while acousticians must hear with their eyes.

  • S4L Launches 2025 Facilities and Construction Brief Survey

    Spaces4Learning recently launched its 2025 Facilities and Construction Brief Survey, which gathers information on K–12 and higher education construction projects nationwide from the previous year. The data we get from you, our readers, forms an industry report offering an overview of current trends in school facilities.

  • Florida Elementary School to Undergo $47M Reconstruction

    The School District of Osceola County in Kissimmee, Fla., recently announced a partnership with construction firm Skanska to reconstruct Reedy Creek Elementary School, according to a news release. The $47-million project will involve the new construction of a 96,000-square-foot academic center, renovating the remaining facilities, a full-site redevelopment, and demolishing portions of the existing school.

  • Texas District Breaks Ground on New Elementary School

    The Splendora Independent School District (SISD) in Splendora, Texas, recently broke ground on a replacement facility for Greenleaf Elementary School, according to a news release. The district partnered with planning, engineering and program management firm Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, Inc. (LAN) for the project.

Digital Edition