Teaching Our Children: Make Summer Count

By Nina Malkin
Thursday, April 15, 2010

Want to know a proven cause of the academic achievement gap? Letting kids spend the summer doing nothing. Find out how you can make vacation all about educational fun.

How on point would NBA All-Star LeBron James be if he spent two months goofing off? Not very–which is why athletes train during the off-season. It's the same with academics. "Research shows that when kids aren't engaged in ongoing learning activities, they lose ground academically," says Ron Fairchild, CEO of the National Summer Learning Association (NSLA). "Kids score lower on standardized tests at the end of the summer than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer." What's more, summer learning loss is among the chief contributors to the nation's income-based achievement gap.

"Every child experiences summer learning loss, but that loss is greater for lower-income children, which puts them at a serious disadvantage that accumulates over time," says Nancy Devine, director of communities for the Wallace Foundation, a nonprofit committed to finding solutions to social problems. Research released in 2008 by Johns Hopkins sociologist Karl Alexander found that by ninth grade, about two thirds of the achievement gap stems from the accumulated summer losses of the poorer children. The reason? Middle-class and affluent families are more likely to have access to mind-enriching experiences during vacations.

Fortunately, high-quality free or low-cost summer programs do exist. Read on for five that have been cited for excellence by the NSLA.

	•	Aim High
	•	BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life)
	•	Bridges to a Brighter Future
	•	Energy Express
	•	Harlem RBI

Download the full article from the May 2010 issue of Essence here.