Research shows that summer contributes to learning and reading loss for all students.
The loss is particularly pronounced in economically disadvantaged students. This is partly due to lack of exposure to print and support for literacy development at home. Also, learning is hindered by greater food insecurity in the summer, when free lunches at school are not available.
Across the country, districts are implementing summer school and at-home programs to arrest learning loss. But an extensive RAND review found that only 34% of all the measured outcomes of summer programs were positive and statistically significant. Moreover, mere access is not enough to yield impact. Students need to be actively engaged in the program for at least 70 hours, stretched over days each week instead of lengthy one-day lessons.
Summer enrichment programs make sense for students who had mastered basic decoding skills. Such programs allow them to continue to build on their reading skills. But what about those who struggle with decoding itself? Such students may be in late primary or middle school and have reading or learning disabilities.
For students with reading disabilities, or dyslexia, summer reading programs are not advisable. Research shows that such students continue to remain below reading proficiency year after year regardless of the quality of reading interventions. It is like Ground Hog Day: regardless of what happened in their summer programs, they return to the same level of reading difficulty in the fall. Worse, research shows that the gap between competent and struggling readers widens as they grow.
Reading disabilities, or dyslexia, are due to inefficient language processing in the brain. To get affected students to read proficiently, we have to locate these inefficient processes and correct them. Fortunately, this can now be accomplished with advanced AI technology, currently marketed under the Dysolve® brand. Figure 1 below shows the actual percentile rankings in school-administered reading assessments of two struggling readers in late primary (red and teal lines). The red line mirrors the typical trajectory of struggling readers after grade 3. The teal line shows the steady increase in percentile ranking of a struggling reader who used Dysolve® previously. The typical drop in reading scores did not occur with the Dysolve® user.
Therefore, to break the cycle of summer learning loss for this population, struggling readers need to first clear processing inefficiencies. Then only can they master decoding skills and make the best use of traditional summer programs.
