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Report

How States Are Expanding Quality Summer Learning Opportunities

Published
By Julie Fitz Julie Woods Naomi Duran Jennifer McCombs
A teacher holding a plant while students view it with a microscope.

Student participation in summer programming can be an effective way to address students’ academic and developmental needs. When well implemented and well attended, summer enrichment programs, academic programs, and employment programs have demonstrated positive outcomes for youth in areas related to program content, including academic achievement in reading and math, social development, mental health, school engagement, and reduction of risk-taking behaviors.

With the influx of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding package, the federal government elevated summer learning as a key strategy for states to leverage as they supported student recovery from pandemic-era learning disruptions. During this time, many states built new or expanded existing infrastructures to distribute financial resources to summer learning providers—the local education agencies (LEAs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) that host summer programs—and guide program implementation that helped create unprecedented access to summer learning opportunities for U.S. children.

As ESSER funding sunsets, states face decisions about their future role in supporting students’ access to quality summer learning opportunities. Given the evidence that well-implemented and well-attended academic, enrichment, and employment-oriented summer programs can effectively support students’ academic learning, social development, and emotional well-being, there are good reasons for states to continue their involvement in this area.

This study sought to understand the policies and practices that states have developed to expand access to high-quality summer learning programs and to share what state leaders have learned about how to effectively support summer learning at the state level. Through case studies of nine geographically and politically diverse states—Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Vermont—we examined different approaches to providing state support for summer learning and gleaned insights from state leaders about how state investments were accomplished at the state level. We organize our findings into five key categories of action that were commonly observed across states:

  1. Garnering support for summer learning investments
  2. Implementing state grant programs for summer learning
  3. Increasing access for priority groups
  4. Promoting high-quality programming
  5. Collecting and using data

In this report, we provide examples of how states navigated each of these areas and identify practices that contributed to their success. The report concludes with policy considerations for states interested in expanding access to high-quality summer learning, drawing on the experiences of the states profiled in this multiple case study.

Garnering Support for Summer Learning Investments

As states move forward from this unique moment of federal investment in and attention to summer, sustaining state focus on and resourcing of summer learning may require significant political will, planning, and leadership. In this study, several activities emerged as important to generate support for state investment in summer learning.

First, state summer learning advocates articulated clear goals for summer learning investments and linked these goals with broader state priorities. Doing so helped to communicate to other state actors how summer investments could complement other policy objectives. State leaders, such as governors and legislators, played a key role in communicating about and generating momentum around state investment in summer to accomplish state goals. Common state goals for summer programs included advancing students’ academic achievement; enriching students’ academic learning, social development, and/or emotional well-being; building students’ career-related skills and prospects; and supporting working families.

Additionally, coalitions of key summer stakeholders—including advocacy organizations, state government leaders, and program providers—helped to generate buy-in for investment through information sharing, collaborative planning, and collective advocacy. Finally, state advocates also worked to identify a consistent funding source for summer learning beyond federal recovery funds, such as through a state budget line item or emerging state funding streams.

Implementing State Grant Programs for Summer Learning

To support summer learning, most states implemented formula or competitive grant programs that varied in their eligibility criteria and administration. These grant programs allocated funding to different types of organizations, depending on the state. Some states, notably those with greater focus on driving academic growth, channeled funding to LEAs to provide standards-aligned learning opportunities during the summer months. Other states designed grant programs that included CBOs—specifically nonprofits that provide afterschool or summer learning programming—as eligible grantees, given their demonstrated ability to provide programming that promotes student mental health and well-being and/or enriches academic learning.

Increasing Access for Priority Groups

In many cases, states invested in summer learning with the goal of serving specific student groups, including students performing below grade level, students from specific grade levels, students needing additional educational services (e.g., students with an individualized education program [IEP] or English learners), and students from underserved communities or families with low incomes. Case study states targeted state investments by identifying priority groups either in legislation or in the grant’s request for proposals (RFPs). Doing so allowed them to either prioritize selected students’ access to program seats or prioritize grant funding for providers serving these student groups. Both strategies provided a means for states to more closely tailor state investments toward support for the students whom the state intended to benefit most.

Promoting High-Quality Programming

States have a key role to play in creating the environment for high-quality programs to flourish. Research on out-of-school time programming—which includes both summer and before- and after-school learning opportunities—points to specific program features that are associated with positive attendee outcomes. For programs focused on promoting the personal and social skills of youth, well-trained staff who deliver instruction focused on building specific skills, active learning opportunities, and positive youth–staff interactions and site climate all are known to contribute to positive outcomes. In academic-focused programming, important features include sufficient program duration and student attendance, instruction from certified teachers with content and grade-level experience, and academically rigorous curriculum.

States adopted a number of approaches to promote quality, while maintaining varying degrees of flexibility for providers. These strategies included requiring funded programs to adopt elements of quality programming, issuing voluntary guidance for summer programming, cultivating a strong summer learning workforce, and providing technical assistance to support programming implementation.

Collecting and Using Data

Data collection and analysis helped state agencies and stakeholders understand the impact of state investments relative to their vision and goals for summer learning. As we have noted, states aimed to accomplish different things through investments in summer learning and, in many cases, their data collection and usage plans reflected these varying priorities. Data collection methods varied and included end-of-year grant reports, provider and participant surveys, interviews and focus groups, site visits, standardized assessment and evaluation tools, and other techniques.

States collected data for a number of purposes, namely to understand participation, unmet demand, program content, and academic impact. They mobilized these data to evaluate provider quality and inform continuous improvement, identify implementation strengths and challenges of the state program, and advocate for ongoing state investment.

Policy Considerations: Actions States Can Pursue to Support Summer Learning

In this section, we draw on our findings to articulate key areas for consideration for state actors—including state legislators, governor’s offices, state agencies, and boards of education, as well as statewide networks and nonprofits—as they work to generate support for state investment in summer learning, implement effective grant programs, improve access for priority student groups, promote high-quality programming, and develop data systems that reinforce program goals.

Generating Support for Summer Learning Investments

  • Set statewide goals for summer investments that reinforce other state priorities. These goals can help to generate political buy-in and inform program design.
  • Build coalitions of summer learning stakeholder groups to leverage the collective expertise and activities of stakeholders—state agencies, state legislators, philanthropists, local government, and/or nonprofits involved in out-of-school time (particularly state afterschool networks)—who are already working to promote broadened access to summer learning.
  • Identify sustainable funding streams that can support summer learning grant programs beyond the sunset of ESSER funds—for instance, by establishing a state budget line item or claiming emergent funding sources, such as cannabis or gambling tax revenue.

Grant Program Implementation

  • Minimize administrative burden to maximize grant program uptake—for instance, by simplifying application procedures or adopting a subgranting structure that minimizes reporting requirements for subgranted providers.
  • Balance grant program requirements with flexibility so that a more diverse set of providers can access state grant funds and provide unique varieties of programming.
  • Leverage partnerships to enhance implementation capacity by drawing on the unique expertise of nongovernmental organizations, such as the state afterschool network.

Access for Priority Groups

  • Use authorizing legislation or RFP requirements to expand access among priority student groups so that summer learning investments are directed toward the students who stand to benefit most.
  • Target funding toward known obstacles to summer learning participation such as program cost, transportation challenges, and, particularly in rural areas, lack of available summer program providers. Through grant RFPs, states can incentivize providers to use funds to address these obstacles.
  • Collect and analyze participation data to understand who is participating in programming and use these data to evaluate the extent to which state investments are benefiting priority student groups. By doing so, grant program administrators can understand ongoing gaps in accessibility, allowing them to make plans to address these gaps in future years.

Promoting High-Quality Programming

  • Require funded providers to incorporate program practices associated with quality as a condition of funding. By doing so, states can incentivize providers’ adoption of known best practices and ensure that attending students get to participate in quality programming.
  • Issue voluntary guidance on summer learning best practices that providers can use to guide their own internal continuous improvement processes, as program capacity allows.
  • Support providers’ continuous improvement with technical assistance that builds their capacity to deliver high-quality programming.

Collecting and Using Data

  • Align data collection and analysis with state goals for summer so that limited state education agency and provider capacity to support these efforts is not overly taxed.
  • Use data to inform continuous improvement, both for the grant program and for providers—for instance, by using it to tailor technical assistance, professional learning opportunities, or program modifications.
  • Leverage grant program outcomes data to advocate for ongoing funding by using it to illustrate the scope of the grant program’s reach, continuing need or demand for summer learning program enrollment slots, and the value of grant-funded programs to students and their families.

In many states, the full potential of the summer months remains untapped. By investing in summer learning, states can better support the developmental and academic needs of students over the course of the full year—not just during the months when school is in session.


How States Are Expanding Quality Summer Learning Opportunities by Julie Fitz, Julie Woods, Naomi Duran, and Jennifer McCombs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

This research was supported by The Wallace Foundation. Core operating support for LPI is provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Heising-Simons Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Sandler Foundation, Skyline Foundation, and MacKenzie Scott. We are grateful to them for their generous support. The ideas voiced here are those of the authors and not those of our funders.

Cover photo by Allison Shelley for EDUimages.