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New study by @andrewMceachin, uses summer gains and losses as a counterfactual to schooling, giving us a window into how inequality may grow in the absence of school. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0002831220937285 1/
While some students learn more than others during the school year, most are making learning gains while school is in session. 2/
But the average student loses 17 - 28% of school-year ELA gains (a 9-month period) during the following summer (a 3-month period). 3/
In math, the average student loses 25%-34% of each schoolyear gain during the following summer. 4/
However, some students learn more during the summer relative to the preceding school year, while others lose nearly all prior gains. 5/
During the summer, a little more than half of students exhibit SLL, while the other half exhibit summer learning gains. 6/
Some students can maintain average schoolyear learning rates during the summer in the absence of formal schooling. Other students,lose nearly as much as what is typically gained in the preceding school-year. 7/
Even in an ideal world, where school-year inequities could be eliminated, achievement disparities would arise simply because of the summer break. 8/
Because, the pattern of gains and losses remains fairly consistent over a child’s schooling years, summer learning contributes to the widening achievement disparities over school-age years. 9/
Summers contribute more to achievement disparities than school years, even though they are for far shorter periods of time. 10/
Natural inference from this study is that differential access and quality of learning during school closure would produce similar patterns. 11/11
