Posts filed under 'Summer Learning News'
2012). While proposing not to increase funding for federal discretionary programs for at least five years, the President has made education a priority that could be an exception to the rule.
The implications for summer learning remain to be seen. Both President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have expressed strong support for summer learning in the past, but so far that has not translated into new federal investments. As a result, summer learning advocates across the country will need to bring the issue into the mainstream of the national education policy discussion.
Despite the lack of an explicit focus on the importance of summer learning, the President’s budget proposal does contain some good news for summer programs. The budget proposes an increase of $100 million dollars to the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program (21st Century), raising its allocation from $1.17 billion to $1.27 billion. 21st Century funds both after-school and summer programs, and the official budget summary specifically mentions summer programs, stating:
“The Administration’s reauthorization proposal for 21st Century Community Learning Centers would support before- and after-school programs, summer enrichment programs, summer school programs, expanded-learning-time programs, and full-service
community schools. All local projects would provide additional time for students, including students with the greatest academic needs and those who are meeting State academic achievement standards, to participate in (1) academic activities
that are aligned with the instruction those students receive during the regular school day and are targeted to their academic needs; and (2) enrichment and other activities that complement the academic program. Projects could also provide teachers the time they need to collaborate, plan, and engage in professional development within and across grades and subjects. This enhanced flexibility would allow communities to determine the best strategies for enabling their students and teachers to get the time and support they need. The $100 million increase proposed for 2012 would support the broader range of programs and strategies proposed under reauthorization and enable grantees to provide higher-quality programming to students and their families.”
The National Summer Learning Association supports this proposal and is pleased that it recognizes the ability of summer programs to provide high quality academic AND enrichment programming for students. We also believe it provides an opportunity to make summer programs a more essential component of education reform by connecting summer learning to school year reforms, such as extension of the school year. Read more about the Association’s position on this issue.
The President’s budget also proposes funding other education programs that could have positive implications for summer learning, including:
· $150 million for the Promise Neighborhoods initiative;
· $900 million for the Race To The Top program (This time school districts would be able to apply for the grants directly.);
· $300 million for the Investing in Innovation Fund;
· $600 million for School Turnaround Grants (formerly called School Improvement Grants), an increase of $54 million over last year; and
· $365 million for the Successful, Safe, and Healthy Students Initiative, which consolidates several existing programs.
Again, this proposal represents the first step in a long budget process that Congress will soon consider. We will do our best to keep ou informed and to engage you in the policy process. If you have any questions or ideas, please contact the Association’s policy director, Bob Seidel, at bseidel@summerlearning.org.
Continue Reading February 18th, 2011
Excellence is a standard we all want to achieve in summer learning. It’s also a bar that can seem unattainable. But programs large and small, well-established or just starting out, have things about them that are excellent. Maybe it’s an inspiring, veteran teacher; a unique campus or curriculum; a fantastic assessment system; or a determined young student who returns summer after summer, encouraging other kids to do the same.
That’s why we’ve designated January as Excellence month at the Association, and launched the “What Makes You Excellent?” campaign on our Twitter and Facebook pages. As the Feb. 11 deadline for applications for the 2011 Excellence in Summer Learning Awards approaches, we want to know what makes your program excellent, and to help share your stories in Tweets, pictures, links, and videos.
Please share your examples of excellence with us. Send us a Tweet, write on our Facebook wall, or email videos, longer stories, or anything else you have that shows the excellent ways in which you serve disadvantaged youth, and the Association will be sure to share.
Don’t forget to download your Excellence in Summer Learning Award application now. In addition to selecting awardees this year, the Association plans to recognize models of excellence in STEM programs, school-community partnership programs, and transitions programs among the applicants.
Program quality manager Larry Smith is eager to hear from you and to help if you’re in the process of completing the application. Good luck!
January 14th, 2011
Do you utilize public programs to provide breakfast and lunch to young people attending your program? Now is the time to start planning and gather information about how to provide healthy nutrition this summer.
Each summer, a small fraction of children eligible to receive nutritious meals actually do. According to the most recent data, only one in six children from a low-income household who ate a school lunch during the year received meals during the summer. According to the Comprehensive Assessment of Summer Programs (CASP), the highest quality summer programs provide all meals (breakfast, lunch, snack) appropriate to the schedule for young people every day the program is in session.
There are many good reasons why summer meals are critical to children. Balanced nutrition supports healthy development. Some research suggests that younger children are disproportionally affected by the loss of nutrition because they cannot obtain food themselves through other means. And for families with already stretched food budgets, income does not increase with school dismissal. Summer meals bridge the gap.
The summer learning community can make a difference. If your summer program doesn’t take advantage of the federal Summer Nutrition programs now is the time to start planning. Here’s what you need to do:
- Visit the USDA’s list of state directors for the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP).
- Find your state.
- Call your state director office and tell them you are interested in being a sponsor of the Summer Food Service Program.
A phone call is a simple step towards supporting the healthy development of children and teens in the most basic way. If you already utilize public support for summer meals, that’s wonderful. Pass the link for this post on to others in your network who may not.
Earlier this week First Lady Michelle Obama launched a new facet of the Let’s Move! initiative, Let’s Move Faith and Communities. This newest endeavor will engage faith- and community-based leaders in efforts to address childhood obesity in their communities. One of the four goals set forth for this group in the coming year is hosting 1,000 new summer feeding sites at congregations or neighborhood organizations. Let’s join the First Lady in her effort to ensure that no child goes hungry this summer.
Do you utilize public programs to provide breakfast and lunch to young people attending your program? Now is the time to start planning and gather information about how to provide healthy nutrition this summer.
Each summer, a small fraction of children eligible to receive nutritious meals actually do. According to the most recent data, only one in six children from a low-income household [https://summerlearning.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/wellness/wellness_resources_in_brief.pdf] who ate a school lunch during the year received meals during the summer.
There are many good reasons why summer meals are critical to children. Balanced nutrition supports healthy development. Some research suggests that younger children are disproportionally affected by the loss of nutrition because they cannot obtain food themselves through other means. And for families with already stretched food budgets, income does not increase with school dismissal. Summer meals bridge the gap.
The summer learning community can make a difference. If your summer program doesn’t take advantage of the federal Summer Nutrition programs now is the time to start planning. Here’s what you need to do:
1. Visit the USDA’s list of state directors [http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Contacts/StateDirectory.htm] for the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP).
2. Find your state.
3. Call your state director office and tell them you are interested in being a sponsor of the Summer Food Service Program.
Earlier this week First Lady Michelle Obama launched a new facet of the Let’s Move! initiative, Let’s Move Faith and Communities [http://www.letsmove.gov/blog/2010/11/30/the-first-lady-launches-let%E2%80%99s-move-faith-and-communities/]. This newest endeavor will engage faith- and community-based leaders in efforts to address childhood obesity in their communities. One of the four goals set forth for this group in the coming year is hosting 1,000 new summer feeding sites at congregations or neighborhood organizations. Let’s join the First Lady in her effort to ensure that no child goes hungry this summe
December 2nd, 2010
The latest post from our Summer Changes Everything host committee features Gail Thomas Strong of WFYI in Indianapolis, who shares great insights about how to make summer learning stick — as well as a favorite place for you to visit while you’re in Indy.
Summer should be about memories. And as adults in summer programs, part of our work should be around creating those memories – new friends, new skills, new learning, and new sense of accomplishment.
I remember a summer camp where I learned to shoot a bow and arrow, and one where I finally managed to get the foil dinner cooked all the way through. There was the summer when I resolved to read an entire mystery series, so made daily trips to the library on my bike. Another summer I set up a candy store in my grandmother’s yard with a friend, and learned a lot about supply and demand – and about eating one’s profits!
As a youth leader, I made it my mission to make sure summers had learning moments every step of the way. The key word was “intentional.” How could we learn more about nature while walking to the pool? How could a field trip to the art museum reveal more than the lovely pieces in the building? How could the teen trip out of town be a prolonged experience in map-reading, budgeting, goal-setting, itinerary-planning, and reflecting? On good days, learning happens incidentally, but on great days, learning happens every minute by design. Camp is more fun, the experience is more meaningful, and the long-term outcomes stick more strongly.
See you at Summer Changes Everything in Indy in November. I’ll bet you have memories of a summer that changed your understanding of who you are and what you could do. At this conference, you’ll learn more about how to make that happen for your campers every day. And while you’re here, visit the new Rhythm Discovery Center museum downtown at Washington and Illinois. Awesome place!
September 20th, 2010
Picture is courtesy of the Sadie Nash Leadership Project.
Each year, the National Summer Learning Association brings all hands on deck for a nationwide search for the best summer learning programs. We solicit applications broadly and wait eagerly to read rich details of programs serving youth in different ways all over the country. Inevitably, we all find a bit of ourselves and our own childhoods in the applications. Programs focusing on the arts find a soft spot with me, and stories of leadership development, college and career preparation and service learning always inspire and remind us why our work is so important.
Every program that applies has something to teach the field, but to award the Excellence in Summer Learning Award, we are looking for a program that is exemplary in both its organizational infrastructure and its model at the point-of-service. The review process is rigorous; programs are first scored on their written applications, using a rubric that encompasses nine domains of program quality and that aligns with our Comprehensive Assessment of Summer Programs. We engage past Excellence Award winners and other experts in the field as application reviewers and always find their diversity of thought and experience to be an invaluable addition to the process.
After applications are scored, 10-12 programs are selected for phone interviews with Association staff and external experts. This year, for the first time, we also conducted site visits to five finalists. Site visits certainly added additional rigor to the process and made this year one of the toughest competitions yet.
We are so excited to award Horizons Colorado Academy/Horizons National and Sadie Nash Leadership Project with the 2010 Excellence in Summer Learning Award. While both programs are already leaders in the field of summer learning, we hope that this award will elevate and celebrate their work with youth to reach an even wider audience of practitioners, policymakers, families and researchers.
Sadie Nash Leadership Project is a program for high school women based in Brooklyn, New York. During the six-week summer program, young women look deeply at the role of women and examine how society’s traditional power structure impacts disenfranchised communities. Association staff members Jennifer Brady and Jody Libit visited the program this summer and reported back that the learning taking place in group discussions was “phenomenal” and reminded them of a college seminar on women’s studies. Sadie Nash is a fantastic example of a program that pushes youth to think, create and achieve beyond the typical boundaries of what’s expected of them in school or in life. We never know how deeply youth can understand and contribute to complex topics until we set the expectation that they can. I’m so glad that Sadie Nash has set the bar so high for the 100 young women it reaches each summer.
Association staff speak often about our vision for summer learning programs that integrate academic acceleration with a focus on social and developmental growth, and Horizons National and Horizons Colorado Academy truly exemplify that vision. By bringing public school children to private school campuses, Horizons program build confidence in youth in their ability to succeed in new settings. Horizons offers hands-on, project-based learning opportunities that integrate rigorous academic content into engaging, youth-driven experiences. Instead of losing reading skills in the summer, or even maintaining them, Horizons youth gain an average of four months of grade level equivalency in reading over the summer — something that is sure to help them enter school confident and prepared, year after year. Horizons also teaches all youth how to swim during the program, meeting a very real and specific need of its community of learners. Of course, the end of summer camping trip isn’t too shabby either!
It’s hard to believe that we’ll be releasing the 2011 Excellence Award application in just a few months at our November conference in Indianapolis. The Excellence Award process is one of the best tools we have to learn about programs all over the country, and there is nothing we love more than spreading the word about innovative, high-quality programming. So to all the programs out there — we want to hear from you! Look for the 2011 application to be posted on our web site in November. Or better yet, get it firsthand in Indianapolis!
August 10th, 2010
A TIME Magazine article posted online today highlights the importance of keeping children engaged in high-quality summer programs that provide both learning opportunities and fun. “Americans have a skewed view of childhood and summertime,” says the article, which also describes summer as “among the most pernicious — if least acknowledged — causes of achievement gaps in America’s schools.”
Featuring our CEO Ron Fairchild and model programs in Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Corbin, Kentucky, the article suggests that expanded access to summer enrichment programs can help combat summer learning loss – particularly for children from low-income families – and improve American competitiveness.
The more in depth August 2, 2010 print version features additional program examples.
July 22nd, 2010
Today the Food Research and Action Center releases Hunger Doesn’t Take a Vacation: Summer Nutrition Status Report (2010). This year’s report shows that while participation in school lunch programs during the 2008-2009 school year went up, fewer children than the year before were fed by nutrition programs over the following summer.
This annual report by the center analyzes data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture about two federal Summer Nutrition Programs: the National School Lunch Program and the Summer Food Service Program. As summer program providers know, children who receive healthy meals during the school year often struggle to get those same meals during the summer months when the school doors may be closed. Summer Nutrition Programs were created to ensure that all children experience summers free from hunger.
Hunger Doesn’t Take A Vacation compares the number of children who qualified and ate meals through the Summer Nutrition Programs with the number of children who qualified and ate meals through the National School Lunch Program while school was in session. Historically, the number of children who consumed meals during the summer is a small percentage of the school-year number.
During the 2008-2009 school year, 17.5 million children received free or reduced-price meals. That was an increase of 800,000 from the previous year (2007-2008), which isn’t a surprise due to the economic crisis from which the country is just beginning to emerge. The good news is that children affected by the economic downturn were able to eat lunch, and hopefully breakfast, at school. Yet participation in Summer Nutrition Programs fell in summer 2009 by 73,000 children at a time when parents were struggling to find work. Only 16 percent of children who benefitted from a free or reduced-price meal during the school year received one last summer. That’s one in five. Sadly, there were likely a lot of hungry children across the country last summer.
But summer programs, nonprofits, schools, camps, and local government agencies are and will continue to be part of the solution by offering children meals through the Summer Food Service Program. One example is Energy Express in West Virginia. This award-winning program engages children in fun literacy-based activities opportunities followed by a meal served family-style to both campers and counselors.
June 29th, 2010
Today is National Summer Learning Day and we could not be any more proud of the movement we see around the country to recognize the importance of quality summer learning programs in the lives of young people. Since 2004, we’ve seen this event grow from a nice idea to powerful demonstration of the strength of programs and the need for them to expand across the country. We kicked things off last week with a Capitol Hill event designed to engage members of Congress is supporting legislation that would increase funding for summer learning. As I write this post, more than 500 events are registered in small towns like Corbin, Kentucky and big cities like San Diego, California. One of my personal favorites is happening early next month when the Pittsburgh Pirates join the celebration by welcoming the 2,000+ participants in the city’s Summer Dreamers Academy to the ballpark for major league baseball game. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi and Congressman George Miller are celebrating Summer Learning Day at City Hall in San Francisco with thousands of kids who are participating in summer learning programs across the city. Have a great day and be sure to let us know how you celebrate.
Note: You can submit pictures, video, reports, and press clips of your event to Susanne Sparks at susanne@summerlearning.org. And be sure to register your Summer Learning Day event.
June 21st, 2010
A report released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation today makes a compelling case for summer learning as one strategy for addressing the nation’s student achievement crisis and getting more kids on the path to reading well by 4th grade.
The special report, “Early Warning: Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters,” is part of the Baltimore-based foundation’s KIDS COUNT initiative, and includes state-by-state statistics on academic and social factors that impact student learning. It makes the case for a more coherent system of programs and services for children from birth through grade 3 that lay the foundation for reading development and future academic success. It cites the research on summer learning loss and the importance of high-quality out-of-school resources, such as books, community programs, summer camps, and technology.
There was some major media coverage of the report today, including this piece in Education Week, and another in USA Today. Ralph Smith, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s executive vice president, told USA Today’s Greg Toppo that too many low-income children “simply lose too much ground over the summer” because of the lack of meaningful and engaging activities.
Mary-Ellen Deily also wrote about the report’s summer learning angle over at Edweek’s Beyond School blog.
Take a look. What role do summer learning programs in your community play in getting kids on track toward reading proficiency?
May 18th, 2010
I read a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine yesterday titled “Building a Better Teacher” by Elizabeth Green. I was struck immediately by how many of elements in Doug Lemov’s taxonomy of effective teaching can be strengthened during the summer months. This is a classic example of how we talk about quality summer learning programs being a 2 for 1 proposition. They benefit kids directly and allow teachers to hone their craft.
March 8th, 2010
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