The National Summer Learning Association (NSLA) is an organization in the United States that claims to aspire "for every child to be safe, healthy, and engaged in learning during the summer." [1]
In 1992, Matthew Boulay, a student at Johns Hopkins University, recruited his fellow undergraduates to provide tutoring and academic support to Baltimore City public schools students during the summer months. This led to a successful program called Teach Baltimore. [2] As a result of the growing research on summer learning loss, Teach Baltimore evolved into the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University in 2001. In September 2009, the Center transformed into the National Summer Learning Association, an independent organization. [2]
NSLA serves as a network hub for different summer learning programs and others interested in summer learning across the United States. According to their website, their efforts are focused on achieving the following results: [1]
Partners of the NSLA include the American Camp Association [3] and Sylvan Learning. [4]
NSLA has been cited in the many articles discussing summer learning loss and its implications for the achievement gap in the United States in publications including the New York Times , the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal . [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
NSLA is regularly cited in a number of local newspapers in connection with recommendations for summer activities. [10] [11] [12]
Camp Fire, formerly Camp Fire USA and originally Camp Fire Girls of America, is a co-ed youth development organization. Camp Fire was the first nonsectarian, multicultural organization for girls in America. It is gender-inclusive, and its programs emphasize camping and other outdoor activities.
A Jewish Community Center or a Jewish Community Centre (JCC) is a general recreational, social, and fraternal organization serving the Jewish community in a number of cities. JCCs promote Jewish culture and heritage through holiday celebrations, Israel-related programming, and other Jewish education. However, they are open to everyone in the community.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) is a gifted education program for school-age children founded in 1979 by psychologist Julian Stanley at Johns Hopkins University. It was established as a research study into how academically advanced children learn and became the first program to identify academically talented students through above-grade-level testing and provide them with challenging learning opportunities.
The Workers Circle or Der Arbeter Ring, formerly The Workmen's Circle, is an American Jewish nonprofit organization that promotes social and economic justice, Jewish community and education, including Yiddish studies, and Ashkenazic culture. It operates schools and Yiddish education programs, and year-round programs of concerts, lectures and secular holiday celebrations. The organization has community branch offices throughout North America, a national headquarters in New York City and approximately 11,000 members nationwide. It owns and operates a summer camp located in Hopewell Junction, New York called Camp Kinder Ring. It also runs an adult vacation campground facility, Circle Lodge, with bungalows and cottages, and a healthcare center in Bronx, New York.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was a U.S. Act of Congress that reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; it included Title I provisions applying to disadvantaged students. It supported standards-based education reform based on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals could improve individual outcomes in education. The Act required states to develop assessments in basic skills. To receive federal school funding, states had to give these assessments to all students at select grade levels.
A summer camp or sleepaway camp is a supervised program for children conducted during the summer months in some countries. Children and adolescents who attend summer camps are known as campers. Summer school is usually a part of the academic curriculum for a student to make up work not accomplished during the academic year.
Teach For America (TFA) is a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to "enlist, develop, and mobilize as many as possible of our nation's most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence".
Robert Edward Slavin was an American psychologist who studied educational and academic issues. He was known for the Success for All educational model. Until his death, he was a distinguished professor and director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University.
Thurber House is a literary center for readers and writers located in Columbus, Ohio, in the historic former home of author, humorist, and New Yorker cartoonist James Thurber. Thurber House is dedicated to promoting the literary arts by presenting quality literary programming; increasing the awareness of literature as a significant art form; promoting excellence in writing; providing support for literary artists; and commemorating Thurber's literary and artistic achievements. The house is individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and also as part of the Jefferson Avenue Historic District.
Summer learning loss or summer slide, is the loss of academic skills and knowledge over the course of summer vacation in countries that have lengthy breaks in the school year, such as the US and Canada. Schools see evidence of this because students are often given a standardised test prior to the summer break and again when they return to school in the autumn.
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development doing business as ASCD is a membership-based non-profit organization founded in 1943. It has more than 125,000 members from more than 128 countries, including superintendents, principals, teachers, professors of education, and other educators. The ASCD Community also includes 52 affiliate organizations, self-organized Connected Communities, and ASCD Student Chapters. While ASCD was initially founded with a focus on curriculum and supervision, the association now provides its members with professional development, educational leadership, and capacity building. ASCD is a global community advancing student achievement by supporting the whole child, and seeks to develop programs, products, and services essential to the way educators learn, teach, and lead.
After-school activities, also known as after-school programs or after-school care, started in the early 1900s mainly just as supervision of students after the final school bell. Today, after-school programs do much more. There is a focus on helping students with school work but can be beneficial to students in other ways. An after-school program, today, will not limit its focus on academics but with a holistic sense of helping the student population. An after-school activity is any organized program that youth or adult learner voluntary can participate in outside of the traditional school day. Some programs are run by a primary or secondary school, while others are run by externally funded non-profit or commercial organizations. After-school youth programs can occur inside a school building or elsewhere in the community, for instance at a community center, church, library, or park. After-school activities are a cornerstone of concerted cultivation, which is a style of parenting that emphasizes children gaining leadership experience and social skills through participating in organized activities. Such children are believed by proponents to be more successful in later life, while others consider too many activities to indicate overparenting. While some research has shown that structured after-school programs can lead to better test scores, improved homework completion, and higher grades, further research has questioned the effectiveness of after-school programs at improving youth outcomes such as externalizing behavior and school attendance. Additionally, certain activities or programs have made strides in closing the achievement gap, or the gap in academic performance between white students and students of color as measured by standardized tests. Though the existence of after-school activities is relatively universal, different countries implement after-school activities differently, causing after-school activities to vary on a global scale.
Educational inequality is the unequal distribution of academic resources, including but not limited to school funding, qualified and experienced teachers, books, and technologies, to socially excluded communities. These communities tend to be historically disadvantaged and oppressed. Individuals belonging to these marginalized groups are often denied access to schools with adequate resources. Inequality leads to major differences in the educational success or efficiency of these individuals and ultimately suppresses social and economic mobility. Inequality in education is broken down into different types: regional inequality, inequality by sex, inequality by social stratification, inequality by parental income, inequality by parent occupation, and many more.
Susan Neuman is an educator, researcher, and education policy-maker in early childhood and literacy development. In 2013, she became Professor of Early Childhood and Literacy Education, and Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.
As an educational reform goal, class size reduction (CSR) aims to increase the number of individualized student-teacher interactions intended to improve student learning. A reform long holding theoretical attraction to many constituencies, some have claimed CSR as the most studied educational reform of the last century. Until recently, interpretations of these studies have often been contentious. Some educational groups like the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association are in favor of reducing class sizes. Others argue that class size reduction has little effect on student achievement. Many are concerned about the costs of reducing class sizes.
Teach For All is a global network of 61 independent, locally led and funded partner organizations whose stated shared mission is to "expand educational opportunity around the world by increasing and accelerating the impact of social enterprises that are cultivating the leadership necessary for change." Each partner aims to recruit and develop diverse graduates and professionals to exert leadership through two-year commitments to teach in their nations' high-need classrooms and lifelong commitments to expand opportunity for children. The organization was founded in 2007 by Wendy Kopp and Brett Wigdortz. Teach For All works to accelerate partners' progress and increase their impact by capturing and sharing knowledge, facilitating network connections, provisioning global resources, and fostering leadership development of staff, teachers, and alumni.
The racial achievement gap in the United States refers to disparities in educational achievement between differing ethnic/racial groups. It manifests itself in a variety of ways: African-American and Hispanic students are more likely to receive lower grades, score lower on standardized tests, drop out of high school, and they are less likely to enter and complete college than whites, while whites score lower than Asian Americans.
Action civics is a modern and alternative form of civics education in the United States. Action civics is an applied civic education process in which participants learn about government by examining issues in their own community and then select a focus issue for action through a process of debate, research the issue and learn advocacy strategies, develop civic skills such as public speaking, formulate a plan, mobilize, educate, then evaluate, and reflect on their experience. Participants' voices are encouraged, valued and incorporated. Participants learn by doing, with a focus on collective action. Action civics can encompass a number of different actions from community service to electoral engagement and from talking about concerns with public officials to creating peer education campaigns.
Girls Who Code is an international nonprofit organization that aims to support and increase the number of women in computer science. "Girls who Code" hosts a summer Immersion Program, a specialized campus program, after-school clubs, a college club, College Loops, and a series of books. The organization is based in New York and has programs in the United States, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom. Girls Who Code has also released many public campaigns to raise awareness of its mission.
Unequal access to education in the United States results in unequal outcomes for students. Disparities in academic access among students in the United States are the result of several factors including: government policies, school choice, family wealth, parenting style, implicit bias towards the race or ethnicity of the student, and the resources available to the student and their school. Educational inequality contributes to a number of broader problems in the United States, including income inequality and increasing prison populations. Educational inequalities in the United States are wide-ranging, and many potential solutions have been proposed to mitigate their impacts on students.