Host & Guests
Host: Ann Stone, senior research officer at The Wallace Foundation
Catherine Augustine, director of the RAND Pittsburgh Office and a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation
Jennifer McCombs, director of research at the Learning Policy Institute and an adjunct policy researcher at the RAND Corporation
After two summers, we see the benefits for high attenders in mathematics and in reading and in social-emotional outcomes. And those, the magnitude of those gains, was not small… they represented about 20 to 25 percent of what kids at that grade-level would learn in a given year.
— Jennifer McCombs
About the Series
High-quality summer learning plays an important role in the lives of our nation’s young people. Summer learning programs can bolster academic knowledge and skills and connect young people to engaging and enriching learning experiences. In the wake of the pandemic, high-quality summer learning programming has become an essential part of children’s learning recovery and well-being.
A new podcast series from The Wallace Foundation features leading field experts, researchers and practitioners who are involved in summer learning and enrichment on the national, state and local levels. Learn how they are planning for these important programs, what it takes to make them effective and engaging for young people and what is being studied and learned along the way.
The first episode focuses on the evidence base for summer learning and what we’ve learned about high-quality programming over the years. Part 1 focuses on the opportunities and risks associated with the summer months and what makes summer learning programs effective. Part 2 focuses on communitywide approaches to summer learning and how summer learning can be an essential component of pandemic learning recovery.
