Summer Learning

Children learn best and retain information more when learning is uninterrupted. ¹ Children from low-income families are less likely to have access to the summer learning experiences that many of their middle-class peers do, and are more likely to fall behind during the summer months.

Low-income children lose as much as two months of reading and math achievement each summer, while their middle-income peers tend to make slight gains in reading.² These year-over-year losses leave lower-income children up to three grade levels behind their higher-income peers by fifth grade.³ Place matters, too: children and youth who live in low-resource neighborhoods are more likely to lose ground in reading over the summer than those in higher-resourced neighborhoods.⁴

Children from low-income households stand to gain the most from high-quality summer learning programs, and they are the least likely to have access to them.⁵

Costs for summer programs vary wildly, with some news reports estimating that Americans spend upwards of $16 billion annually, or about $1,000 per child per summer, although the costs of some summer camps can be two or three times that much.⁶

On average, children experience greater summer learning loss in math than in reading.⁷ Math skills impact third-grade reading proficiency.