Summer School as a Learning Loss Recovery Strategy After COVID-19: Evidence from Summer 2022

To make up for pandemic-related learning losses, many U.S. public school districts have increased enrollment in their summer school programs. We assessed summer school as a strategy for COVID-19 learning recovery by tracking the academic progress of students who attended summer school in 2022 across eight districts serving 400,000 students. Using value-added models that control for students’ demographics and prior achievement, we estimated a positive effect of summer school on math test achievement (0.03 standard deviations) but not on reading tests. With only 13% of students participating, these districts’ summer programs closed ~2% of their total pandemic-related learning losses in math and none of their losses in reading.