How to Prevent Summer Learning Loss: Tips for Parents

Principles for preventing the summer slide

Keep it small, regular and enjoyable. No study reviewed here shows that a particular parent-run routine beats another, so the sensible approach is to build a habit that your family can actually keep up.

Little and often. Fifteen to thirty minutes of reading most days is easier to sustain than a weekly marathon. Research on summer programs points the same way: the children who benefited most were those who attended frequently.
Give math a small, steady place. Because the average dip is larger in math than in reading, a few short math moments in the week are a good investment.
Offer choice. Children read more of what they pick. Let them choose books, recipes to cook or games to play.
Mix learning with play. Brookings and NWEA both describe programs that combine academic work with hands-on or recreational activities as the better design.
Protect rest. Summer is also for play, sleep and boredom. A light routine leaves room for all three.

Should kids do school work during summer?

Not necessarily. The research cited on this site studied programs and reading interventions, not parent-led worksheets, so there is no strong evidence that formal homework-style work is required. Light practice that feels like play, such as cooking with fractions or reading a series, achieves the same goal for most families. If your child's teacher flagged a specific gap, ask for a short list of skills to practice rather than a stack of pages.

Reading habits that keep skills up

A daily reading habit is the simplest prevention step. A set time, a steady supply of books the child likes and a parent who reads too do most of the work.

An Institute of Education Sciences practice guide for kindergarten through third grade recommends that each student read connected text daily, rating the evidence behind that recommendation as moderate. It is written for classrooms, but the logic carries over to summer. Practical ways to apply it:

Keep a library card active and visit every week or two so the pile of books never runs out.
Set a fixed, short slot, for example before screens or after dinner, and treat it like brushing teeth.
Read aloud to younger children and read the same book as an older child so you can talk about it.
Count audiobooks and comics. Pairing a printed book with its audio version helps some reluctant readers.
Let a favorite series run; finishing book after book matters more than the level of any single title.

What does the research say about reading interventions?

Evidence is mixed, which is a useful reminder not to over-sell any single trick. Brookings reports that a program mailing books to children's homes over the summer, called READS, showed benefits for lower-income students in earlier studies, and that text messages with reading tips to families improved reading scores for third and fourth graders, with effect sizes of 0.21 to 0.29. But a later randomized trial of READS with 793 third graders in 19 North Carolina schools, reviewed by the What Works Clearinghouse, found no statistically significant effect on reading comprehension. Read that as: getting books into homes is sensible and cheap, but it is not a guaranteed fix. You can find more about library options on the page about summer reading programs for kids.

On average, NWEA data show reading scores holding steady over summer, so reading is rarely the place for alarm. The exception is a child who reads little at home or who is already behind, for whom a steady habit is worth more effort.

Math in daily life

Use math you already have around you: cooking, shopping, travel, games, money and building. Short and frequent beats long and rare.

Since math is where the average summer dip is largest, a few deliberate moments each week help. None of the ideas below is a researched program; they are simply ways to make number work part of life.

In the kitchen. Double or halve a recipe. Measure with a cup and a half cup and ask how many of one make the other.
At the shop. Estimate the total before the till does, compare prices per unit, work out change.
On trips. Calculate arrival times, split distances into stages, read a map scale.
With games. Card games, dominoes, dice and board games exercise number sense without feeling like practice.
With money. A small pocket-money budget makes percentages and subtraction concrete.

For a child who struggles with basic number facts, an IES practice guide on supporting students who struggle with mathematics suggests about 10 minutes per session building fluent recall of arithmetic facts, and rates the evidence for that recommendation as moderate. Short card drills or a quick game fits that pattern. See the page of summer learning activities for more ideas that combine play and learning.

Structured options: camps and programs

Summer programs can help, but the benefit depends on attendance and quality. In a large randomized study, gains showed up for children who attended at least 20 days.

Camps

General day camps and specialist camps (science, art, sport, coding) add structure and social time. The research evidence concerns academic summer programs, not camps in general, so judge a camp by what your child does there: is there reading, building, measuring or talking, or is it only screens and waiting? Ask what a typical day looks like and how many weeks it runs.

Programs

The most rigorous study on summer programs, a randomized trial by RAND and The Wallace Foundation in five US school districts in 2013 and 2014, found that children who attended a voluntary program for at least 20 days showed gains in math and in English language arts after the second summer, equal to about 20 to 25 percent of a year's learning. The researchers stress that the attendance comparison is correlational, although controlled for prior achievement and demographics. Children who were only offered a place, whatever their attendance, showed a modest math gain in the first summer and averages that were not statistically significant overall.

NWEA's 2026 review adds a caution about scale. Programs in ten large districts in 2022 and 2023 had small positive math effects of 0.02 to 0.03 standard deviations and no reading effect; only 13 percent of students took part, and programs ran three to four weeks on average. Prior research, the authors say, suggests programs should run at least five weeks with at least three hours of instruction a day, combine academics with engaging activities and actively recruit families. For what to ask about after-school options, see after-school enrichment programs.

Preventing summer slide by age group

Younger children need play, stories and counting; older children need choice, purpose and some independence. These are suggestions based on the research above, not prescriptions.

Preschool and kindergarten

Read together daily, sing, count steps and snacks, and visit the library. NWEA data show a small math dip even between kindergarten and first grade and no reading dip on average, so a steady story habit is plenty.

Grades 1 to 5

This is where the average math dip is largest. Keep reading daily, add two or three short math moments a week, and consider a library reading challenge. Children who just had a strong year sometimes lose the most, according to NWEA's 2019 analysis, so a good June report is not a reason to skip the habit.

Grades 6 to 8

Give older children ownership: their own book list, a cooking or budgeting project, a hobby with measurements, or a part-time responsibility at home. The Brookings review notes that losses were larger at higher grade levels in the early research.

Summer learning loss in high school

Evidence for high school is thin. The NWEA analyses cited here cover kindergarten through eighth grade. Teenagers benefit from the same basics, such as reading for pleasure and keeping math skills warm before an advanced course, and from real-world projects, work or volunteering. If a summer reading list or course prerequisite exists, a few weeks of light review before September is enough.