With coordination across multiple mayoral and school administrations, Boston After School and Beyond nurtured and grew what is now known as the “Fifth Quarter,” solving all sides of the summer program problem. It bundles funding from federal, state, city, and private philanthropic sources. Through research and data agreements, it ensures programs with the city’s seal of approval meet field standards and goals. And it attempts to end the annual parent scramble to find available slots by operating a user-friendly website of programs searchable by age, type, and cost (many are free).
How — and why — did the city rapidly create a national model for summer school?
First, the vast majority of children in Boston have caregivers who all have jobs. Summer programming is not a nice-to-have; it is a necessity for working families. Busy kids mean more parents can remain in the workforce, supporting their families and contributing to the local economy.
Summer enrichment provides more than just child care. Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book “Outliers” popularized a term educators long had intuited: “summer slide,” the decline of academic skills while children were on summer break. With a 1980s Baltimore study as the touchstone, the lagging achievement of low-income students, students of color, and other historically marginalized students was pinned on missing out on the academic enrichment, camps, or travel during the summer that their higher-income peers benefit from. A recent Gallup survey revealed that higher-income families are twice as likely to enroll their children in summer planning than lower-income families. Closing the summer access gap is a potential path to closing achievement and opportunity gaps.
I have seen this firsthand. In my 15 years as a public school teacher and principal, I ran summer school six times. Although I would describe the initial attitude of the children as one of resignation at best, with those same children I witnessed exceptional academic and social growth. More often than not, I saw that carry into the following school year.
There have been competing studies and data on the consistency and scale of summer learning loss, but the theoretical quickly gave way to the practical needs created by the COVID-19 pandemic. To address children’s stalled academic progress, which disproportionately impacted lower-income students, school districts around the country leveraged federal recovery dollars to add learning time in the summers of 2021, 2022, and 2023. Some school districts made their academic year longer. Many, like Boston, invested millions to expand summer programs with an additional academic focus.
Does it work? Yes. A RAND-administered random control trial, the gold standard in social science, showed that students who regularly attended summer programs outperformed their peers academically.
The same research indicated those students made greater progress in social and emotional skills.
American schooling is inherently conservative, largely the same in its form, delivery, and calendar for nearly a century. Change is rare, even when something has a clear track record of working. To meet the needs of the families of today and achieve goals of equity, it is reasonable to ask whether summer learning should continue to be an appendage.
Why not incorporate it, and, for all who want or need it, just make “summer school” part of “school?”
Will Austin is founder and CEO of Boston Schools Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding access to high-quality education in the city.
