Summit 54: Summer Advantage

Summer Advantage (SA) is a voluntary, five-week intensive summer learning program that provides summer enrichment to elementary school students to help mitigate summer learning loss. The program targets low-income students, who tend to experience the steepest declines in learning over the summer. By reducing summer learning loss, the program expects to improve student literacy outcomes.

Study Goals:

The study includes implementation and impact evaluations. The purpose of the implementation evaluation is to explore whether Summit 54 implemented the program with fidelity to its stated model. The purpose of the impact evaluation is to examine whether reading skills of students in SA improved significantly more than those of similar students not served by the program.

Research Questions:

The research questions were:

1. Does participation in SA have an impact on student literacy for students who participated compared to a district sample as measure by standardized assessment?
2. Does the number of years of participation in SA moderate impacts on student literacy, such that students with previous participation experience greater impact than students with no previous participation?
3. Does SA participation impact kindergarten student performance on standardized literacy assessment compared to non-program participants?

Findings:

The report’s findings were divided into two sections: program implementation and student outcomes. The report found the following:

• Program Implementation:
  • The program was implemented overall in accordance with its intended design.
  • Over the three years of implementation monitoring, Summit 54 found that SA was implemented with fidelity every summer and met the program’s implementation goals.
  • Achieving the program’s implementation goals reflects the program’s significant success in building connections with parents and education and community leaders.
  • The program’s implementation goals also reflect the program’s continued ability to effectively communicate expectations and implementation goals to staff at all levels and to obtain staff buy-in for maintaining program fidelity.
• Student Outcomes:

• Gathering and analyzing data across three summer sessions, Summit 54 found a statistically significant and positive impact of SA on student reading performance for kindergarteners and 1st graders.
  • Kindergarten students who participated in SA scored 15 percentage points higher on fall assessments than similar students who did not attend SA.
  • First grade students who attended SA scored six percentage points higher on fall assessments than similar students who did not attend SA.

For more information, download the full report and report brief.