Keep the Progress Going! Avoid the Summer Slide

Summer break is almost here and while it might be enjoyable for students to cut loose from their academic routine, the impact a lack of studying over the summer break can make a difference in the coming year. 

The summer learning loss in students is real and can have a profound impact on a student’s continuing academic progress. The Kumon Math and Reading Program is designed to continue your student’s studies over the summer and beyond. Through continuous practice students can exercise their brains and enjoy their summer break at the same time.

Practice of any discipline will improve your skills. But once you begin to take time off from your routine, some backsliding can occur. It can happen in music, sports, dance, coding or science. In short, what you don’t use, you can lose. Almost every discipline or skill requires practice to achieve excellence. The regular and intentional application of effort over time is fundamental to skill development and expertise in various disciplines. The same goes for educational studies.

A 2020 study from Annenberg Institute at Brown University in Rhode Island shows that while not every student experiences a summer learning loss, those who are impacted can suffer significantly in their academic achievement over time.

In the study, researchers used a dataset of more than 200 million test scores across eight grade levels, which represented about 18 million students in 7,500 districts in all 50 states. The researchers wanted to know more about how learning gains during the school year compare to gains or losses during the summer, how much those losses or gains vary, if the gains and losses are randomly distributed among students and how large the summer break’s influence is in producing end-of-school outcome disparities.

The researchers found that summer break did influence the learning loss in some students, but not all. Some of those students lost as much knowledge as they had gained in the preceding school year.

“In a five-year period, the average student in this group ultimately loses nearly 40% of their total school-year gains during the intervening summers,” the study reported.

By continuing their learning through the summer, students can keep their brains active. Keeping an active academic schedule provides the needed skills to maintain the rhythm they need for when school begins again.

But keeping that rhythm can be a challenge, and Kumon’s Instructors understand that and are available to encourage and support students year-round.

Family dynamics and added extracurricular activities can present challenges to maintaining a routine. However, Kumon worksheets – on paper or on Kumon Connect – are portable and can be taken along on vacation or wherever summer takes you.

The Kumon Math and Reading Program can minimize summer learning loss through practice and repetition on necessary skills.