Summer Learning and Nutrition

According to a report released by the RAND Corporation, the average summer learning loss in math and reading for American students amounts to one month per year. More troubling is that it disproportionately affects low-income students: they lose two months of reading skills, while their higher-income peers — whose parents can send them to enriching camps, take them on educational vacations and surround them with books during the summer — make slight gains. A study from Johns Hopkins University of students in Baltimore found that about two-thirds of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income ninth graders could be explained by summer learning loss during the elementary school years. Read More.

California Food Policy Advocates have issued their annual report
on summer nutrition in California that documents an alarming drop in the number of low-income children getting federally-funded summer meals, due primarily to budget cuts that reduced the availability of summer school. To view the annual report, click here.