Rebooted summer programs make learning fun to prevent 'summer slide'

Jairo Martinez and seventh form classmates in a summertime programme at Coliseum Higher Prep Academy in Oakland talk to their teacher, Toynessa Kennedy, about chemic reactions. Credit: Lillian Mongeau, EdSource Today

While summer classes targeted at struggling students are nearing extinction on many school campuses, several districts are rebooting the traditional summer instruction model by blending academics with recreational activities intended to prevent students from falling even further behind.

Unlike traditional summer classes that districts had to pay for out of their own budgets, these programs are funded with help from federal and state initiatives or grants from philanthropic foundations. Many of the programs are typically offered in partnership with nonprofit groups, some of which have already been working on campuses to provide after-school programs during the regular school year.

These summer programs are existence reinvisioned every bit a manner to use the schoolhouse break time more effectively to help close academic achievement gaps between more flush and poor students. In contrast to traditional remedial summer classes, these "enrichment" programs focus on fun, engaging activities – with a strong educational component – to proceed pupil interest high.

Traditional remedial summertime classes can be "pretty grim," said Katie Brackenridge, senior director for expanded learning initiatives with the Partnership for Children and Youth, whose "Summer Matters" campaign pushes for expanded summer programs. "Part of it is that kids already walk in the door probably non liking learning then much, and that's how they got stuck in remediation in the commencement place. Nosotros're looking at how do you make those learning opportunities engaging."

Go on up, catch up

On a recent July morning time, 7th graders at Oakland Unified's Coliseum College Prep Academy in East Oakland, for example, were decorated converting their classroom into a science museum where they would presently demonstrate chemic reactions to a visiting class of 8th graders. The programme built on what students learned on a previous visit to the Exploratorium, a science museum in San Francisco that features hands-on exhibits and exploration.

With cups of baking soda and calcium chloride in front of them, students played the office of the scientist, explaining chemical reactions to pretend visitors.

In some other classroom, students used colored pencils to find and color patterns they found on a geometric worksheet.

Earlier in the mean solar day, students participated in more than rigorous programs that focused on keeping up skills in math and reading. Older students who needed brand-up classes participated in credit recovery programs.

Sixth-grader Taheerah McKinney knew exactly why she was there – and she was glad.

"Usually children lose what they've learned when they continue summer break," explained the well-spoken ten-year-old, who wants to go a dermatologist. The summer programme helps "become your grades upwardly when yous're in regular schoolhouse," she said.

Oakland is among the districts bucking statewide trends by blending traditional bookish summertime schoolhouse with enrichment programs at well-nigh 45 campuses.

This summer, Oakland is serving upward to 6,000 students from pre-kindergarten through loftier school, including offering credit recovery and remediation courses at ten high schools.

The district receives about $800,000 in grants and state money to assistance run summertime enrichment programs at several schoolhouse sites. That includes federal Title one money intended for low-income students that the district sets bated to assistance pay teacher salaries for summer programs, plus a $360,000 grant from Walmart Foundation, $100,000 from San Francisco-based S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, and about $226,000 in federal 21st Century Community Learning Center funding, co-ordinate to commune figures.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a big supporter of summer programs, has besides defended $14 1000000 over the side by side four years to back up programs in 10 communities, including Oakland, Los Angeles and Sacramento.

"We don't want to have kids sitting in desks for 6 hours during the summertime," said Julie McCalmont, coordinator of Summer Learning Programs in Oakland Unified. "At that place'due south no research to prove that's what it takes to get kids dorsum on track. Nosotros accept learning goals that take to exercise with wellness and health, that take to practice with social and emotional learning, the kind of goals that allow united states of america to be more innovative with our remediation and pull abroad from that traditional summer schoolhouse model that kids find kind of a drag. We desire kids to be clamoring for our programs."

Summer haves and have nots

The shift to more enrichment-based programs reflects an economic reality in the country, where school districts' full general fund budgets were non able to sustain more traditional summertime classes intended to assistance students who are lagging academically make upwardly for lost time or work.

An EdSource survey of the thirty largest school districts found that, while 16 districts planned to continue their summertime schoolhouse programs this year, their offerings are drastically reduced from the starting time of the recession in 2008. Vii districts said they would have to cut their programs even further compared to last year. Two districts, Anaheim Wedlock High and Long Beach Unified, won't offer any academic summertime schoolhouse programs this year, the survey establish.

A shift similar to the one in Oakland is underway in Los Angeles Unified.

The country's largest school district will offering credit recovery programs – make-up courses for students who failed a course during the regular school yr – at just 16 of its 106 loftier schools this summer.

Five years ago, L.A. Unified's summer school budget was $42 million, said Javier Sandoval, LAUSD'southward intervention administrator for summertime schoolhouse programs. This year, the district eked out $i million to salvage what courses it could, he said.

Contrast that with the estimated 26,500 students who are expected to participate in summer enrichment programs at some 200 unproblematic and eye school campuses throughout L.A. Unified.

Taheerah McKinney, a sixth grader at Coliseum Higher Prep University in E Oakland, colors patterns during a summertime program. Credit: Lillian Mongeau, EdSource Today

The district does non provide any of its own core budget to support the enrichment programs, said Tim Bower, managing director of summertime programs for LAUSD. Instead, the district receives about $6 million in supplemental grants for summer learning from the state's Later on School Education and Safety program. Boosted programming is provided by the nonprofit L.A.'due south Best, which receives a $135,000 grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, among other state and federal funding, to run the programs.

About one tertiary of the district'south summer enrichment programs are run past Fifty.A.'s All-time, Bower said. The nonprofit also runs the majority of the commune's after-schoolhouse programs during the schoolhouse year.

50.A.'southward Best serves about half dozen,000 students at seventy school sites during the summer, said Tommy Brewer, managing director of staff development at the organization.

All the same, the need is huge, Brewer said, and even available funding can't keep up with demand.

Santa Ana-based THINK Together is one of the state's largest nonprofit providers of afterwards-school programming. Information technology too offers summertime enrichment programs to nearly 13,000 students in ten school districts throughout the state, from Rancho Cucamonga to Sacramento. Funding is provided by the federal 21st Century Learning Centers plan, which is distributed past the state Department of Education, After Schoolhouse Prophylactic and Education funds, Title i and Title 3 money, as well as through funding from the Walmart Foundation.

Enrichment programs typically run about half-dozen weeks and are offered for as long equally six hours a day. Mornings are traditionally spent on academics, while the afternoons are dedicated to hands-on STEM studies – scientific discipline, technology, education and mathematics programs – arts and crafts, lab work or sports.

A study of three summer enrichment programs, including those in Los Angeles, conducted by the Summer Matters campaign, indicates the programs produce results. Students in the programs raised their vocabulary skills equally much as one-third of an instructional course at the cease of the six-calendar week program. Students and their parents likewise reported that attitudes virtually school and reading improved after participating in the programs.

Because they are dependent on outside funding, the potential for these programs to become permanent substitutes for traditional district-run summer classes is as yet unknown.

"In order for summertime learning programs to spread across the state, there volition need to be public back up for them," said the Partnership for Children and Youth'due south Brackenridge. "These are not programs that, over the long term, can be sustained at volume by individual funding, but private funding can absolutely play a role in augmenting public support."

This written report is one of a series of reports on expanded learning time supported past a grant from the Ford Foundation as part of  of a multi-urban center reporting project by EdSource and EdNews Colorado, EdSource Today, GothamSchools and the Philadelphia Public School Notebook.

To get more reports like this one, click here to sign upward for EdSource'south no-toll daily email on latest developments in instruction.

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Source: https://edsource.org/2013/rebooted-summer-programs-make-learning-fun-to-prevent-summer-slide/36311

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