Summer Learning Recruitment Guide

Understand Your Audience

Remember, parents have choices about what their children will do during the summer—including staying at home. You'll be much more likely to create effective  messaging if you put some time and effort into understanding what your audiences think about summer, summer learning, and your summer learning program and what they would like the program to offer. You’ll have to make decisions about how and when to do it and who in your district will oversee or do the research, but it’s worth the effort.

Image

  Make sure parents know all the details of your program like hours and transportation.

There are many ways to better understand your audience, from working with a research firm or local university to conduct focus groups or one-on-one interviews to having your own team talk directly to parents.

We conducted a series of focus groups with parents. You can find out more about what we learned in the What Parents Think About Summer and Summer Learning section below. You'll need to conduct your own research, though, to understand how the particular features of your existing or planned summer learning program work or don't work for parents in your community.

Image

  What’s your program’s “brand”? What do parents say to each other about it?

Whatever approach you take, there are five types of information you’ll want to get. Create a discussion guide that covers each:

• What do parents think of your summer learning program—positive and negative? What do other parents say about your program?
   
• What do they want your program to offer their children? What would the perfect summer learning experience look like for their child?
   
• What do their children think of your program?
   
• What are the key details that parents need to know to make a decision about signing their child up for your program? These may include program hours, who will teach and supervise students, transportation, site selection, meals, etc.
   
• What are the barriers that could get in the way of parents registering their child? These could include not only logistics—hours, transportation, etc.—but also your program’s reputation or “brand.”

Image

  Put some time and effort into understanding what your audiences think about summer learning and your summer learning programs.

​​​​​Create Engaging Messaging

Good messaging is crucial not only for recruiting students but also for engaging decision-makers both inside and outside the district who are important in making summer learning a priority.

Here's how the districts turned what they learned from parents into sharp, effective messages:

Image

  Good messaging is crucial for recruitment and for engaging decision-makers both inside and outside the district.

• Hearing from parents how motivated they are by aspirational messaging led to this phrase, a version of which appeared in many outreach and recruitment materials: “Your child will sharpen the math, reading and writing skills needed to succeed in 4th grade and beyond.”
   
• Because many parents in our focus groups believed they could address any summer learning loss themselves, it was important to remind them that summer learning programs offered something they could not find at home. Rochester came up with this: “A select group of teachers has been chosen and trained to provide the most effective instructional strategies for your child’s success.”
   
• Keeping in mind that parents want their child's summer experience to be both educational and enjoyable, the districts stressed that their summer learning program offers students a mix of academics and fun.

Image

  Keep your communications consistent by creating a message map

One surprising insight came up in all our focus groups: Parents feel they have relatively little influence over what happens in their children’s lives, whether it's keeping them safe from street violence or shaping how the school system educates them. It was this insight that led us to a bold message, directly addressing parents’ desire to be able to influence their children’s lives in a positive way: “Looking for an opportunity to take charge of your child’s future? The [name of summer learning program] is a smart choice.” (This message tested well, and many of the districts and their partners used a version of it. Some developed their own main message to reflect their particular program offerings and their knowledge of what local parents are looking for.)

We put that message in the middle of a visual tool called a message map.

As you can see, the main message is supported by four supporting messages. Underneath each supporting message are proof points—brief factual statements needed to make the case.

Your message map is not meant to be shared publicly. It’s a tool that you and your team can refer to when writing a recruitment flyer, for example, or preparing to speak to a group of parents, to ensure your messaging remains consistent.

Image

  To build and maintain trust, your messaging must be based on fact.

To create your messaging, start with these three questions:

• What specific need does your program fill for parents and students?
   
• What is the most important benefit your program offers to parents and students?
   
• What makes your summer learning program different from all of the other summer offerings in your community?

Next, answer this question: What are the three or four most important things parents need to know about your summer learning program? Turn each item on that list into a concise and clear statement—these are your supporting messages. Fill in the boxes in the template with these messages. (If you need to, add another box, but we would not go beyond five supporting messages.)

Now, list the facts that bolster each supporting message in each box. These are your proof points.

In order to build and maintain trust, your messages must be based on fact. If there's a big gap between how the program is described and the actual experience, parents and students will be disappointed and likely tell their friends.

Image

  Key insight: Parents want to be able to influence their children’s lives in a positive way.

Create a Written Plan

A written plan will help you and your team stay focused, especially if you keep it short. It should consist of:

• Target audiences
   
• Goals
   
• What you need to achieve
   
• Tactics and timeframes
   
• How you will measure progress

Image

  Be specific. Broad descriptions of target audiences make it difficult to focus.

Target audiences: Identifying exactly whom you need to reach

Broad descriptions of the students you're trying to reach (e.g. "children who will benefit from a summer learning program") can make it difficult to focus your efforts and communicate with key stakeholders, such as principals. Be specific. Here are three examples:
 

• Children at risk of retention,
   
• Children at the lowest level of reading proficiency,
   
• Children who have IEPs.

Goals: Make sure you can measure

In your written plan, goals should be numeric so you can measure your progress. Here are some examples:

• 500 students register for summer learning program,
  • 100 students from each grade, 1st  through 5th
  • 90 percent of registered students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch,
     
• 80 percent of registered students attend on day one of the program.

Your goals will be determined by a number factors, your budget chief among them.

Image

  Goals should be numeric so you can measure your progress.

What you need to achieve

To reach your goals, what do you need to get done? Writing these steps down will help you determine the tactics to use.

Here are some examples:

• Promote awareness among parents of the benefits of signing up their children for our program,
   
• Create excitement about the program among children in our target groups,
   
• Educate principals about the program's benefits and eligibility criteria.

Note that each of these statements starts with an action verb.
 

Develop a schedule and measure progress

Every successful recruitment effort has two common elements:

• A timetable laying out specific activities and when they will take place, and
   
• Metrics for determining success and identifying any potential problems along the way.

Image

  Every successful recruitment effort has a timetable and metrics for success.

A timeline or calendar is the only way to keep track of when activities like holding an open house or sending out registration flyers need to take place.
 

Measurement is the key to identifying problems and safeguarding precious resources. It can also serve as motivation: More than one district sent weekly emails on to principals and their supervisors listing the number of eligible children at each school and the percentage who had already registered.
 

Registration isn't the only important thing to measure. If your plan calls for meeting with individual principals to brief them about your program, track the number of meetings that take place. If it calls for direct engagement with students, consider tracking those contacts.

Be consistent and assertive

Use as many different ways of reaching parents as possible. In our focus groups, parents expressed no preference for mailings, flyers, phone calls, emails or text messages.
 

And remember, one communication will not do the trick. Some parents conscientiously review every piece of paper their child brings home from school. Others get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of materials and may overlook your registration form. Or the “backpack express” could get derailed: Students often forget about the papers at the bottom of their backpack, never getting them to their parents.

At a minimum, try to reach every parent at least three times using at least two different approaches.

Image

Reach out to parents at least three times in at least two different ways.

Use personalized outreach

It can be  meaningful to parents and students alike to hear a recommendation for your program directly from the people that matter to them. When Crosby asked parents who these people are, they mentioned teachers, principals, assistant principals and guidance counselors.

Principals are especially important. We found that schools' registration numbers started to climb once their principals made outreach a priority.
 

Having trusted people make phone calls, send personal notes or talk to parents at school events is la​bor-intensive but powerful. Go to the Build Your Plan page for tips and tools to help make it happen.

Image

Offer parents as many ways as possible to register their children.

Build relationships with parents and students

Relationship-building means making parents and students feel like they are part of a summer learning "family."
 

To create that feeling, districts focused on the time between the end of registration and the first day of their programs, sending home a confirmation letter as soon as a registration form was received, putting on events in the spring for parents and students who had registered, and communicating directly with registered students as the school year wound down and summer approached. Activities like these likely contributed to a decline in no-show rates.​
 

To keep students coming back from summer to summer, districts are now working to stay connected with parents and students year round. Here’s an example of a holiday card produced by Boston Public Schools and Boston After School and Beyond and sent before winter break by the Boys & Girls Clubs, one of Boston's summer program providers: ​

Make registration as easy as possible

Offer parents as many ways as possible to register their child. Options include mailing the completed registration form into the central office, sending it back to the child's school, completing an online form, and registering at on-site at events or over the phone. ​

Take note: The more options you offer parents, the more difficult it can be to keep track of registration data. Make sure it's clear who is responsible at each school for collecting registration forms, reporting registrations to the summer learning team and transmitting completed forms to the central office in a timely manner.

Also important: writing materials at a 6th-to-8th-grade reading level, preferably closer to 6th grade, if possible. A flyer that takes too much effort to understand may be set aside. A handy tool for testing the reading grade level of any text can found in Microsoft Word: Just go to File/Options/Proofing and select "Show Readability Statistics."
 

Image

Write your materials at a 6^th-to- 8^th-grade reading level.

Engage students directly

Many parents are much less likely to register their child for a summer learning program if the child isn't excited about it.  Parents are also less likely to enforce regular attendance if their child isn't enjoying the experience. Students are, for lack of a better word, your customers.

Events like ice cream socials, pizza parties or a small-group lunch with a teacher are one way to market to students. Another is to address and send a postcard directly to them. Children love receiving their own mail. At least one district encouraged teachers participating in the summer learning program to reach out to eligible students at their schools so the children would know they'd be entering the program with at least one important adult relationship in place.

Go to the All Resources page, for examples and templates.

What Parents Think About Summer and Summer Learning

Before the districts planned and launched their recruitment efforts, Crosby Communications conducted 11 focus groups with roughly 100 parents of third and fourth graders in three cities. This is what we learned:

• Parents revealed that they were not immediately familiar with the term “summer learning.” But once they learned what it meant, their reaction was very positive. They liked that the concept emphasized a mix of fun and academics and saw it as clearly different from summer school.
   
• Parents are very protective of their child’s summers—they want their child to have fun during the summer and a break from what they perceive to be the hard work of the school year.

Image

  WHAT PARENTS WANT TO KNOW

  Will my child be ready for next school year?

• Parents have a negative reaction to the term "summer school."
   
• The idea of helping their child get ready to succeed in the next grade is very motivating to parents.
   
• Parents believe that summer learning loss is real but they don’t see the urgency of addressing it. Only when we told them their child may fall behind over time did they recognize the need to take action. However, many parents believe they can address the problem themselves by giving their child workbooks or connecting them to online programs. Other parents believe that teachers can just play a bit of “catch up” in the fall.

Image

  What Parents Want to Know

  Who will be supervising and teaching my child?

• Parents may be motivated to register their child in a summer learning program, but it's the details that drive the decision: How  many weeks does the program run? What are the hours of operation each day? What is the cost? Is there convenient transportation? Who is supervising and teaching the children?
   
• Parents specifically mentioned these potential barriers to having their child take part: transportation, hours of operation, cost, location and proximity to home, and the perceived safety of the site.
   
• Parents routinely mentioned the importance of giving their child a say in their summer activity planning;  before they would register their child for a summer learning program they need to be convinced that he or she would like it.

Image

  WHAT PARENTS WANT TO KNOW

  Will my child have fun this summer?

• The word “free” was not popular with parents. It seemed to suggest a lack of quality. “No-cost” was better received. The term “apply” was also unpopular because it seemed to suggest that somebody would be judging them and their child. “Register” or “sign-up” were terms that parents found more emotionally neutral.
   
• Many of the parents in these focus groups don’t make summer plans until late in the school year. Most said they make plans in mid- to late-April and into May. Some reported making them earlier, while others said they wait as late as June.

DEFINING SUMMER LEARNING

The definition of summer learning used in the focus groups was: “A summer learning program is run by the public schools. It is free. It is a nice mix of school subjects, like reading and math, fun activities and field trips. The program helps children keep learning during the summer so they don’t forget what they learned during the school year, and it helps them get ready to do better in the new school year.”