This report makes a research-based case for federal provision of out-of-school complementary learning supports from birth through high school, particularly for poor children, so that all students gain the skills that economists, educators, and employers agree are necessary for success in the 21st century. Four decades of consistent research…

The purpose of the investigation was to examine the developmental trajectories of bilingual preschoolers' comprehension of Spanish and English and to determine whether a lengthy summer vacation impacted children's development during the preschool years. Participants included 83 bilingual children who were followed over a 2-year period during which…

This report identifies the different settings in which summer programs for disadvantaged youth most commonly take place--schools, parks and recreation departments, community--and faith-based organizations, and child-care programs-- and examines the limitations and opportunities presented by each in building better programming. It reviews broadly…

Children and youth who reside in economically disadvantaged households and in low-resource, urban neighborhoods are more likely to lose ground in math and reading over the summer than their higher-income peers. Although summer learning programs are a promising strategy for narrowing this achievement gap, surveys indicate that only 25 to 36 percent…

Even with current evidence-based preschool programming efforts for children from high-risk backgrounds, many children vary in their skill levels at school entry. The authors examined the influence of using an evidence-based literacy curriculum during a 6-week summer program. The authors documented improvements in children's letter-naming,…

For many children in America, summer vacation means camp, trips to new or familiar destinations, visits to museums, parks and libraries, and a variety of enriching activities--either with families or as part of a summer learning program. But for millions of others, when schools close for the summer, safe and enriching learning environments are out…

Previous studies have identified peer provocation as a challenging class of situations for youth. The work presented here builds on previous methods of assessing peer provocation by (a) increasing the contextual detail of the vignettes; (b) developing a reliable, descriptive coding system of the range of youth responses to physical, verbal, and…

This California program has students learn and earn at the same time. (GB)

The National Summer Learning Association is the only national organization that focuses exclusively on learning during the summer months. It works to ensure that children and youth in high-poverty communities have access to quality summer learning opportunities that support their academic performance and healthy development through hands-on…

There is perhaps no more pressing issue in school policy today than the achievement gap across social lines. Achievement differences between well-to-do children and poor children and between disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities and majority whites are large when children first begin school, and they increase over time. Despite years of study…

This paper deals with a tragedy in the field of human services. The tragedy lies in the fact that a program with a fair modicum of success will not be continued because the decision-makers in the state government concerned with this area decided with insufficient justification to end this program after the summer of 1968. Six hundred boys, nine to…

During the summer of 1969, Vicore, Inc. simultaneously conducted four classes in reading improvement skills for disadvantaged youth employed as Summer Aids at the Naval Weapons Laboratory in Dahlgren, Virginia. (Author/EB)

Enoch Pratt Free Library (Baltimore) hired twenty inner city teenagers for an eight-week period, placing them under four college student program directors. (Author/JB)

Operation Opportunity was a demonstration project sponsored by General Foods to hire disadvantaged high school students for summer jobs and to hold in escrow one dollar for every dollar earned for future education or vocational training at any approved institution. (BC)