“What do we actually know? Less than we think,” said Paul von Hippel, a professor of public affairs and associate dean for research at the University of Texas at Austin.
Though students appear to learn less and potentially forget some of what they learned in the summer, education researchers say that summer break is not something to overly worry about. It can be an opportunity for learning, catching up or invigorating a child’s love of learning.
“There are many things that parents and families can do to mitigate summer learning loss and also to spark a love of learning in kids,” said Kathleen Lynch, assistant professor of learning sciences at the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education.
Summer learning research in flux
Contrary to popular perception, the science on summer learning loss in grade school is not settled.
A 1996 meta-analysis thrust summer slide into the broader consciousness with evidence that students lose about a month of learning in reading and math, on average, over the season. It also raised alarms that summer was widening the achievement gap between children from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds and those from wealthier ones, said Megan Kuhfeld, director of growth modeling and analytics at the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a nonprofit academic assessments organization.
But many of the results from these early studies were not consistently replicated. In an influential 2019 article in Education Next, von Hippel highlighted the lack of research consensus and the abundance of open questions about summer learning loss.
Researching summer learning loss is challenging. Ideally, exams should be given to students right before they leave for summer break and again when they return to school in the fall. They should also test the same material. But in the older studies, few tests focused on how the summer break affected learning and instead are “often piggybacking on tests that were written for a different purpose,” von Hippel said.
More modern testing methods did not bring clear answers, however.
In a 2023 study, von Hippel and his colleagues compared three different tests tracking elementary students’ math and reading skills through the 2010s in the United States.
They found that the different tests showed different results about summer learning. The widely used NWEA test showed that children lost two to three months of learning in math and reading. But the federally administered Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies, focusing on kindergarten cohorts, also known as ECLS-K tests showed that the summer slide was trivial; students lost less than a week of learning in reading, and there was no statistical difference in math. A third test conducted by the education test company Renaissance reported large losses in math similar to NWEA but smaller losses in reading.
In a recent analysis comparing the summer learning loss from each test, including a fourth, new test, Kuhfeld “was surprised by the magnitude of the variation,” she said.
The most recent research is inconclusive on whether summer widens educational inequalities across socioeconomic status, race or gender.
“The question of who learns more than who or who forgets more than who is very difficult,” von Hippel said. “And I would view it as unresolved.”
It is tough to understand the causes behind these summer learning differences because detailed information cannot be readily compared. It is difficult to get private educational testing companies with competing business interests to share data, Kuhfeld said. And the questions asked on the federally administered ECLS-K exams are kept confidential from researchers as well.
For education researchers, “it’s just a field in flux at the moment,” Kuhfeld said. But “I’d rather have more data than less data,” she said.
So, what is the takeaway for parents and teachers?
“I think it’s clear that students, at the very least, don’t learn very much over the summer vacation, on average,” von Hippel said.
Students’ learning stagnates or slips somewhat during the summer, though to what extent, on average, is unclear. There is also variability in each student, school and district, researchers said, and the amount of learning is more variable during the summer than during the school year, which provides a more standardized educational experience.
Von Hippel also pointed out that children learn and forget things over the summer, but they forget over the school year, too, though to a lesser extent.
“I view it as similar to a child climbing a sand dune,” von Hippel said. “What you see in the summer is less stepping and more slipping.”
What parents can do to help kids learn in the summer
Try not to worry or fear summer learning loss, researchers said. Instead, think about summer as an opportunity for more learning. Trailing students can catch up, while those who are ahead can get more enrichment, von Hippel said.
Formal summer programs are one option, and evidence suggests they can help. A 2021 meta-analysis of 37 studies on mathematics summer programs found they can improve student achievement in math.
However, parents can help their children learn even without enrolling them in an official program. For example, one 2013 meta-analysis of 41 summer reading interventions reported that those carried out at home can be as effective as classroom-based ones.
Reading is especially important to keep up in the summer, researchers said. See if your school has summer reading lists, and make sure children have access to the library, Kuhfeld said. Parents can serve as good role models by reading as well to show that “reading is a part of life,” Lynch said.
Math may seem harder to incorporate into the day, but math is everywhere, and can be found in many engaging everyday activities: cooking involves measuring ingredients; shopping entails calculating costs; playing sports or board games means keeping score. Even asking children to make estimations — how long a walk to the store will last, for example — can be an opportunity to keep their math skills sharp without asking them to drill their multiplication tables.
The relative freedom of summer break means that children also have the opportunity to dive deeper into topics that they are interested in but did not get the time for during the school year.
“Build learning opportunities in kids’ daily lives that are enjoyable,” Lynch said. “Focus on the joy of learning rather than stressing out about summer learning loss.”
Do you have a question about human behavior or neuroscience? Email BrainMatters@washpost.com and we may answer it in a future column.
