August 2018: Student Liaison Report
Summer learning loss takes a greater toll on students’ achievement in math and reading over time, according to an ongoing study by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA).
By the end of middle school, the study found that students may lose a third to half of what they learn during the year to summer slide, according to a study summary article by reporter Sarah D. Sparks for Education Week.
“As kids grow less and less during the school years, they are still seeing the same summer drop — so they are losing proportionately more,” said Megan Kuhfeld, a research scientist at NWEA and the study’s author.
Kuhfeld tracked the achievement of students in more than 500 schools that participated in the MAP Growth test in reading and math, Sparks writes.
The computer-adaptive tests are given at least twice a year, allowing a more detailed look at how summer affects student achievement across elementary and middle grades.
According to Sparks, Kuhfeld analyzed the scores of more than 42,000 students from grades three to six, and nearly 40,000 students from grades five to eight in an unnamed southern state.
The gaps are measured in RIT scores, a vertically aligned scale that allows researchers to compare academic growth across grades. On average, students lost about two points out of a possible 250 each summer in reading and a little more than four points each summer in math.
Kuhfeld found both white and black students and those of different income levels lost academic ground over the summer, but overall summer slide, “doesn't seem to be primarily driven by student race, and it doesn’t seem to be primarily driven by (the percentage of students eligible for) free and reduced-price lunch at the school level.”
Instead, differences between students at different schools explained the overwhelming majority of the overall summer learning gaps.
Sparks writes that Kuhfeld plans to expand the study in up to 40 participating states and, to release deeper analyses of racial and socioeconomic trends in the coming months.