Summer fun drops student reading scores

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Students board a school bus outside of Buffalo’s Waterfront Elementary. Photo by Garrett Looker.

Educators call it the “summer slide.”

In the spring of 2023, almost 41 percent of Buffalo students in kindergarten through third grade were reading at — or above — grade level.

But when those students returned to school in the fall — as first through fourth graders — some of their reading skills had fallen: 34.5 percent reached their benchmark.

The 6-point drop is the summer slide, a few points steeper than the typical loss in recent years. And, an Investigative Post analysis found, it primarily affects the district’s youngest students, with kindergarteners taking the largest hit. 

Last year, reading scores of kindergarten students promoted to the first grade dropped 15 percentage points, with individual schools seeing drops as steep as 40 points. That’s a trend that has persisted over at least the past seven years, data show. 

Students promoted from first to second grade dropped an average of almost 10 percentage points last summer.

“When kids aren’t actively engaged in academics during the course of the summer, they may not maintain the gains they made the previous year,” said Anne Botticelli, chief academic officer for Buffalo Public Schools.

“Over half of students lose about a month of learning,” said Anne Ryan, executive director of Read to Succeed Buffalo. The summer slide “particularly impacts children in poverty.”

The summer slide was less apparent among older elementary students. In fact, pupils promoted from third to fourth grade showed an almost 1 percentage point increase in their reading levels.

Before leaving for summer break, 36 percent hit benchmark reading levels. When they returned for the fourth grade, just under 37 percent scored at grade level.

The Covid-19 pandemic may have increased learning loss during the past four summers, particularly with students who started school in 2020 or 2021, according to educators.

“The pandemic has had an impact on students learning across the board, so that’s always a potential factor,” Botticelli said.

But generally, she said, the slide is a combination of factors, including actual learning loss that occurred over the summer and new grade-appropriate assessments.

“It’s probably a little bit of both,” she said. “The tests are slightly different between grades.”

Youngest most affected

The summer slide is yet another hurdle students, teachers, and parents face in the “reading crisis” that affects all of Western New York and beyond, educators said.

The slide is neither new nor unique to Buffalo. But Buffalo is among school districts with a testing program that enables it to quantify the drop.

Investigative Post analyzed the district’s DIBELS scores — a reading assessment that is administered three times a year — for kindergarten through fourth grade from 2017 to 2019 and 2021 to 2023. Testing data was not available for 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The analysis found students overall lost reading skills every summer, with an average annual drop of 4 percentage points.

The slide fluctuated between a loss of 2.5 and 4.6 percentage points in years 2017 to 2019, and drops of 0.3, 6, and 6.3 percentage points in years 2021 to 2023.

In all years, the youngest readers — in kindergarten and first grade — were the most impacted. The slide hits the youngest students hardest, educators say, because they learn so much new information in those early years.

“Those are also the foundational years for kids when they’re learning how to read. So we are teaching a lot of skills to very young students,” Botticelli said.

Overcoming the slide

Data show summer learning loss is generally made up each year. However, educators say the larger the slide, the longer it takes, hampering teachers from making forward progress.

“I’m hoping that we can catch them up in September, the first week of October, and then continue on and move,” said Nicole Herkey, a support reading teacher at Southside Elementary. 

“It just adds that extra layer of pressure,” Herkey said.

Of Buffalo’s nearly 40 elementary schools, Community School 53 in the heart of the East Side experienced the steepest slide for any one class in 2023.

Pupils entering School 53 for the first grade last fall scored 42 percentage points lower than they had in the spring, bringing the percent of students reading at grade level to 14.

At the Harriet Ross Tubman School in the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood, first graders promoted to second grade were also greatly affected by last year’s summer slide, dropping 38 percentage points upon returning in the fall.

Data is not yet available to see if those students overcame the slide. But in 2022, that same cohort of students at Tubman — then kindergarteners promoted to first grade — faced a 25 percentage point slide, with 41 percent reading at grade level.

By the spring of their first grade year, 67 percent of those students were reading at grade level, overcoming the summer slide and then some.

“Once they start to get it, once they start to realize that this is all related … it takes off quick,” Herkey said.

“They soak it up like sponges,” Botticelli said of the district’s youngest students. “They are wonderful.”

The situation was different at School 53, where first graders in 2022 did not make up the loss. Students there left kindergarten with 78 percent at grade level. In the fall, as first graders, they dropped to 21 percent. By the end of the school year, 29 percent hit the benchmark on their final first-grade test. 

“It’s different tests at each grade level, so it's not always apples to apples, per se,” Botticelli said.

Summertime schooling

Buffalo schools offer students and families several “specialized programs” during the summer months to address the slide, said district spokesman Jeffrey Hammond.

Those supports include settings with small groups and individual instruction, along with the district’s summer school and suggested reading list.

“Over the course of that summer program, we worked with kids specifically on reading and mathematical skills, which is why you probably see some of those gains,” Botticelli said. “That program was targeted at helping kids recover learning loss from the pandemic.”

In every grade between kindergarten and sixth except for third grade, students made improvements by the end of 2023’s summer school, according to data supplied by the district.

Kindergarteners made the largest leap: 55 percent of pupils read at benchmark levels when exiting the program, compared to 44.5 when they began. 

“What we want to try to do is make sure that by keeping them engaged, instructionally or through various tools that they might have at home, that they’re able to quickly recoup any potential loss and or maintain,” Botticelli said.

Keeping kids engaged 

Keeping children engaged and learning is critical during the summer months, experts said. Without being in a classroom each day, stemming learning loss is up to parents and caregivers, said Ryan, from Read to Succeed.

“The absolute easiest thing is reading,” Ryan said. “Reading and talking and interacting with their kids.”

But Ryan worries that many parents and guardians don’t know the summer slide exists.

“If more than half of our kids are losing more than a month of learning, that would signify that a lot of parents don’t know about summer slide,” Ryan said. “Children’s minds need to continue to be engaged even if they’re not in a formal academic program.”

Exposure to new books, places, experiences — and most importantly, new words — is crucial, Ryan said.

Along with the district’s summer programming, the city offers Mayor Byron Brown’s Summer Reading Challenge, and the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library offers children a summer reading program.

“Anything that we can do that instills in children a love of reading is an important step that we can take,”said John Spears, director of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. 

The library system tries to “combat” the summer slide by reinforcing the enjoyment of reading, giving out free books, and hosting entertainment events, said Daniel Lewandowski, the children’s department manager for the library system.

“If you really reach one kid, that can make all that difference to that kid,” Lewandowski said. “It’s such important work, and it’s such profound work … to be able to see these kids and have an opportunity to make a real impact on their lives.”

Garrett Looker