“No more pencils, no more books…”

As we ease into June, the sense that summer is just around the corner becomes more prevalent, especially to those of us with children at home. Most kids in New York have only two to three weeks of school left before summer vacation starts. According to some experts, that means students have about two to three weeks until they start losing the skills they have worked the whole school year to achieve.

According to the National Summer Learning  Association (NSLA), “All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer. Research spanning 100 years shows that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer.”

There are plenty of resources out there on how you can help prevent the summer slide with your children.

What’s even more concerning is all of the research that shows how a child’s economic status impacts just how bad this or her summer slide can be. Generally, most students lose about two months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months. Low-income students also lose more than two months in reading achievement, despite the fact that their middle-class peers make slight gains. (NSLA)

We’ve written about the impact of poverty on education before here and here. Check out these articles for more information on the summer slide:

• How summer increases the achievement gap
• Summer “brain drain” worse for poor kids

Do you have plans for helping prevent the summer slide in your own home? Any thoughts on how we can work as a society to help prevent yet another instance of educational inequalities based on economic status?