Summer learning loss: The influence of summer school programs on student achievement in language usage, math, and reading

The purpose of this quantitative study was to analyze the effects of summer school remediation on elementary student achievement, while controlling for the effects of gender, socio-economic status (SES), and ethnicity, by comparing the differences between pre-test and post-test scores on the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) for matched pairs (based on pre-test scores) of summer school participants and non-summer school participants for each of five years. The independent variables included summer school participation, gender, SES, and ethnicity. The dependent variables included the student post-test NWEA MAP scores in each of three subject areas (language usage, reading, and math) for each grade level (2–5), in each year of the study. The covariates included the student pre-test NWEA MAP scores in each of the same subject areas and grade levels for each year of the study. Study participants were convenience samples of summer school students and their nonsummer school counterparts in grades 2–5 from multiple elementary school sites within a single school district in northeast Indiana. As summer school programming remained the same for each year of the study, scores from each of the five years were combined for analysis according to subject and grade level to lend an overall perspective. For language usage, data was collected for 850 matched pairs of students. For math, there were 828 matched pairs. The study also included 853 matched pairs of students for reading. iv Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) at the . 05 probability level (p=.05) was used to determine if there was a statistically significant difference between student post-test scores for summer school participants and their non-summer school counterparts, while controlling for gender, SES, and ethnicity. In order to isolate the effects of summer school for each grade level (2–5), there were 4 separate analyses, one for each elementary grade level, and 3 sub-analyses within each grade level – reading, language usage and math–leading to a total of 12 sets of ANCOVA analyses. The results of ANCOVA analysis showed a significant interaction effect between summer school participation and SES for both language usage and math in grade 2. However, there were no significant interaction effects or main effects of the independent variables on posttest reading scores for second graders. For third grade, ANCOVA analysis showed a significant interaction effect between summer school participation and SES for language usage. Participation in summer school was shown to have a significant main effect on post-test reading scores with summer school students scoring significantly lower than their non-summer school counterparts. In grade four, ANCOVA analysis revealed a significant interaction effect between summer school participation and gender for language usage. SES showed a significant main effect on post-test math scores, with paid lunch students performing significantly better than their free/reduced lunch peers for both summer school and non-summer school student groups. Participation in summer school was shown to have a significant main effect on post-test reading scores in fourth grade, with summer school students scoring significantly lower than their nonsummer school counterparts.