Summer School and Summer Learning: An Examination of the Short- and Longer Term Changes in Student Literacy

Impact of Intensive Summer Reading Intervention for Children With Reading Disabilities and Difficulties in Early Elementary School

“…The intervention group maintained their reading ability across the summer on nearly all measures, and significantly improved their scores on a few measures. The present findings align with prior studies reporting that summer programs can reduce or prevent summer slump in students characterized as having learning disabilities (Cornelius & Semmel, 1982), falling short of literacy benchmarks (Zvoch & Stevens, 2011, 2013, coming from low SES homes (Johnston, Riley, Ryan, & Kelly-Vance, 2015;Kim & Quinn, 2013), or enrolled in schools with programs to foster summer reading in minority children (Kim & White, 2008). Thus, the summer may offer a significant opportunity to support students with reading difficulty in maintaining or improving their reading skills rather than falling even farther behind, especially students from low SES environments (Allington & McGill-Franzen, 2013), and to place those students on a better trajectory for learning to read and for all the other educational benefits and opportunities associated with effective reading.…”

How Does Fidelity of Implementation Matter? Using Multilevel Models to Detect Relationships Between Participant Outcomes and the Delivery and Receipt of Treatment

“…As a means to support struggling readers over the summer vacation period, the district established an academically intensive summer literacy program. Summer instructional programs are considered a targeted and cost-effective approach to offset the ''summer slide'' in achievement that is commonly observed among youth from disadvantaged backgrounds (Borman & Dowling, 2006;Cooper, Charlton, Valentine, & Muhlenbruck, 2000;Zvoch & Stevens, 2011). The theory of change underlying the district's summer school initiative follows the ''faucet theory'' of learning, which suggests that distinct seasonal learning patterns stem from educational resources available at different points in the calendar year (Alexander, Entwisle, & Olson, 2001;Entwisle, Alexander, & Olson, 1997).…”

Resits in higher education: merely a bar to jump over, or do they give a pedagogical ‘leg up’?

“…Jacob and Lefgren (2004) examine the introduction of a compulsory summer school for low achievers in examinations, and using a regression discontinuity design find significant positive effects for third graders, but no significant effects for sixth graders. Similar, small results of extra tuition over the summer produce positive, small effects (Zvoch and Stevens (2011), Matsudaira (2008)).…”