Summer Learning

Children learn best and retain information more when learning is uninterrupted. ¹ Children from low-income households are less likely to have access to the summer learning experiences that many of their middle-class household peers do, and are more likely to fall behind during the summer months. And students in low-resourced communities stand to gain the most from high-quality summer learning programs.

Children from low-income households can 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 Year-over-year losses leave these 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-resourced neighborhoods are more likely to lose ground in reading over the summer than those in higher-resourced neighborhoods.⁴

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.⁵