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Summer Learning Initiative

Click here to learn more about the upcoming Closing the Summer Gap: Summer Learning Initiative School Year Component starting in October 2007.

PASE hosted its annual Summer Learning Resource Fair
on May 1, 2007.  Arts, cultural, and historical organizations from around New York City shared information on their summer offerings. These institutions offer a wealth of educational activities and resources for youth programs during the summer months. To learn more about the institutions and how they might work with you in the summer, please click here.

In a groundbreaking study of low-income Baltimore students entitled “Summer Slide,” Johns Hopkins sociologists Karl Alexander and Doris Entwisle found that these children ”were learning at the same rate as middle-class students during the school year but fell much further behind during the summer" (See their research in Summer Slide in the City: A Case for Year-Round Schooling?). The authors attributed this disparity to the fact that the more affluent students participated in arts, sports, reading, and camp activities in their summer programs, while poor students seldom had such experiences. In early grades, the gap was overcome somewhat upon returning to school but widened over the years.   "By the end of 5th grade, the difference in verbal achievement between poor and non-poor students is more than two years; in math, it is a year and a half."

Following a presentation by Dr. Alexander at PASE in 2000, PASE began the Summer Learning Initiative Project, which teaches community youth agencies how to effectively include activities that support a child's school year learning with summer activities. PASE plans to work intensely with 70 agencies over a three-year period to provide:

• training sessions for summer program coordinators and line staff,
• ongoing technical assistance to ensure the development of excellent learning (literacy) curricula,
• model curricula and resource materials, and  a system of evaluation for the project.

Funders: Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Family Trust, and the RGK Foundation