A Dallas summer learning ecosystem is helping students fight COVID learning loss

First grader Lillian Moore sat at a cafeteria table alongside mounds of red, yellow and blue clay, eager to create an art piece she could display at home on a bookshelf or bedside table.

The 6-year-old is normally very quiet and reserved at her camp, sometimes not participating in activities at all. But on one recent afternoon, she carefully sculpted her sea turtle, surrounded by fellow students also still catching up from COVID-19 disruptions.

Her mother, Jessica Moore, enrolled Lillian in Thriving Minds’ full-day camp to ensure her daughter continued learning with peers. When the pandemic closed down schools in 2020, Lillian was in daycare.

“It was really tough on her,” Moore recalled. “She was only 3 but still old enough to ask almost every day if she got to go back to school yet.”

The camp is part of a robust summer ecosystem of about 600 community partners who aim to bolster students’ academics and social-emotional needs while providing them with fun activities.

Combatting the “summer slide,” when children lose academic skills over the long break, has taken on even more urgency since the pandemic, said Byron Sanders, CEO of Big Thought, one of the lead partners organizing the efforts.

Sudden school shutdowns, a hybrid return to classrooms and decreased student attendance, enrollment and engagement had a negative impact on learning and impacted children’s social skills, educators and advocates say.

“We’re probably going to be dealing with the echoes of that [pandemic learning loss] for years to come,” Sanders said.

Many Dallas children are struggling with school.

Half of DISD students’ reading test scores and 30% of math test scores dropped during the pandemic, according to 2020 data from the Measurement of Academic Progress.

Statewide last year, elementary and middle school students’ passing rates on the STAAR tests bounced back to pre-COVID levels, but math scores were still behind. Data from the 2022-23 school year will be released next month.

Summer learning helps kids get back on track, research shows.

Big Thought and Dallas City of Learning have teamed up with the school district to coordinate such efforts since 2014.

For every 10 days spent in their programming, elementary students were 25% more likely to pass a STAAR math exam and 35% more likely to pass reading, a 2022 Southern Methodist University study found.

The program has received recognition from national and local entities. In 2016, two years after its inception, Dallas City of Learning won a National Summer Learning Association Founder’s Award.

Earlier this year, DISD superintendent Stephanie Elizalde expressed in a letter to the community partners that she has seen its positive impact on students’ academic and social-emotional development through the pandemic.

But many large districts nationwide are not expanding or improving summer programming, the Center on Reinventing Public Education reported last year. It’s harder for schools that don’t partner with local organizations to provide a wide range of summer activities, partially because federal COVID-19 funding for such programs is winding down, according to reporting from K-12 Dive.

The Dallas-area programs saw a 121% increase in enrollment from summer 2021 to 2022 with 47,000 students participating, Sanders said. Officials expect a 5-10% bump this year.

Still, that’s significantly lower than pre-COVID enrollment numbers of up to 77,000 children in 2019.

Across the city, many museums, libraries, businesses and nonprofits offer summer programs.

While some instructors who teach sessions are current or retired educators, they also include artists, engineers, entrepreneurs and other professionals.

“There’s not one organization that can serve all of these kids, not even the school district,” Sanders noted.

Jo Patterson, an art instructor at Thriving Minds’ camp, runs a company called Epic Domain that’s focused on social and emotional learning through enrichment programs.

Although she helps guide students with projects like the air-dry clay sea creatures, she encourages them to put their own touches on their creations. For example, she showed Lillian and the other students how to mix the clay to create the colors they wanted to use.

She demonstrated how they could create tiny balls of clay to look like sea anemones, or press their fingers into a sheet of blue clay to resemble waves in the ocean. But what the students’ finished products looked like were up to them.

Art education teaches children creativity, self-expression and life skills that can be more difficult to explore during the school year when classrooms are focused on learning state standards and preparing for standardized tests, Patterson said. That’s why she tries to make all her art lessons student-led.

“This is the student being able to say, ‘This is what I imagined,’” she said. “‘This is what I envision.’”

Building on self confidence and social skills helps students grasp other lessons, educators say. Enrichment at Thriving Minds – which is also an after-school program during the school year – includes reading, math games, music lessons, poetry writing and playing sports.

That gives kids more freedom to build skills without the pressure of school, said Brandi Reed, a Thriving Minds site coordinator.

“With us, it’s not that you’re graded on it,” she said. “It’s: I’m here to help you to learn it.”

Kendall Pidgeon, Big Thought’s programs manager, added that all staff receive social-emotional training. Research from organizations like New York University and the Aspen Institute shows a focus on students’ emotional and social skills improves their academic and life outcomes.

But test scores and socializing aside, Mila Gallegos, a third grader at Rosemont Primary, summed up her favorite part about summer camp: “We get to have fun.”

The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.

The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.