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Researchers' causal analyses evaluated the effect of offering summer programming, regardless of whether students actually attended the program

• After the first summer, students offered the program (treatment group students) outperformed control group students on fall mathematics assessments.
• After the second summer, offering the program did not significantly affect any of the measured outcomes among students in the treatment group.

Researchers used correlational methods to examine how implementation features of the summer program and student attendance related to student outcomes

• After the first summer, high attenders outperformed control group students in mathematics in the fall and on the subsequent spring 2014 state assessment.
• After the second summer, high attenders performed better than control group students in mathematics and language arts through spring 2015.
• Greater amounts of time on task and higher quality of instruction were correlated with better outcomes through spring 2015.
• After the second summer, high attenders received higher social-emotional skill ratings in the fall than control group students, but that advantage did not persist.
• Three school years after the second summer of programming, academic benefits for attenders decreased in magnitude and were not statistically significant; however, when benchmarked against typical achievement gains at the same grade level, they remained large enough to be educationally meaningful.

The National Summer Learning Project (NSLP) examined the implementation and effectiveness of voluntary summer learning programs developed by five school districts — Boston, Massachusetts; Dallas, Texas; Duval County, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Rochester, New York — and their local community partners. The study spanned three phases. The RAND research team (1) collected formative data for strengthening the five summer programs in 2011 and 2012; (2) examined student outcomes after one summer (2013) and after two summers of programming (2014 and 2015); and (3) examined student outcomes in spring 2017, at the end of three school years after the second summer of programming. This seventh report in a series summarizes the findings of this third phase in the context of earlier findings and offers implications for policy and practice. Overall longitudinal findings show that, by spring 2017, the academic benefits for high attenders decreased in magnitude and were not statistically significant — although when benchmarked against typical achievement gains at the same grade level, they remained large enough to be educationally meaningful.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Student Outcomes: Findings and Interpretation

• Chapter Three

  Conclusions and Implications for Policy and Practice