Welcome and Introduction
Sarah Pitcock
Chief Executive Officer
National Summer Learning Association
NSLA’S Mission and Goals
The National Summer Learning Association is the only
national nonprofit focused on closing the achievement gap
through high-quality summer learning for all young people.
Our vision is that all young people have access to highquality summer learning experiences to help them succeed in
college, career, and life.
NSLA:
 Recognizes and disseminates what works to
influence policy and practice
 Develops and delivers capacity building
offerings to providers and cities
 Convenes and empowers actors focused on
children and youth
Why Research Matters
 Maximizing an increasing policy focus on time
and learning- opportunity to make the case
with data
 Creating a common language and agreement
on what quality looks like, building an OST
workforce
 Making possible citywide systems for OSTagreement on power skills, comparisons!
Why Research Matters
It’s hard to solve a problem you don’t
understand.
Wallace Foundation Research
Making Summer Count: How Summer
Programs Can Boost Children’s Learning
RAND Corp. (2011)
Getting to Work on Summer Learning:
Recommended Practices for Success
RAND Corp. (2013)
www.rand.org
Summer Learning Works
• High-quality programs can reduce summer learning loss and
lead to academic and non-academic gains (McCombs, 2011)
• Gains can endure for two years after participation
• Summer learning programs can contribute significantly to
young people’s health as well as learning
• Summer reading programs, when coupled with supports, can
also reduce learning loss and lead to gains. (Kim, 2004, 2006,
2008; READS Program)
Characteristics of High Quality
Programs
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Smaller class sizes (1:5- 1:8)
Providing individualized instruction
Involving parents
~150 hours per summer, at least two consecutive summers
High-quality instructors (involve professional educators)
Aligning school year and summer curricula
Including content beyond remediation
Tracking effectiveness
Remove structural barriers (transportation, full-day
programming)
• Entice students
How research is shaping our work
 State ELO task forces (TX, WA, NJ) looking at
evidence-based models. Opportunity and
responsibility to legislate quality in OST.
 California Summer Matters Campaign: Ready
to act on data when funding came back,
tracking attendance, expanding access and
improving quality
How research is shaping our work
 My Brother’s Keeper and Campaign for
Grade-Level Reading: population-level change
requires a range of research-based
interventions:
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book distribution programs
parent workshops
Lunch at the Library
comprehensive enrollment based programs.
Key OST Research Priorities
 Longitudinal data
 Holistic outcomes
 Year-round connections between school, afterschool
and summer learning data
 Disaggregated data- understanding how programs
impact different kinds of young people and why
 Changing parent perceptions- if we build it, they will
not necessarily come
Key OST Research Priorities
 Participation data and natural comparison
groups
 Creating infrastructure at the state and local
level that make telling the story through data
easier
Questions to Consider
 What are we learning from the data? What
are we doing with it?
 How does it relate to how we plan and
evaluate next year?
 How can we create economies of scale for
OST evaluation?
 What is the least common denominator we
need to measure?