In 2004, the William T. Grant Foundation awarded a grant to Duncan Chaplin (Mathematica Policy Research) and Jane Hannaway (Urban Institute) for a research project called, “Reversing the Summer Slide: Experimental Evidence.”
Previous studies had shown that low-income children’s test scores fall behind those of their higher-income classmates during summer break. Chaplin and Hannaway studied whether a summer program could help these children improve their reading abilities and lessen the drop-off in academic skills they experienced during the summer.
To do this, the researchers designed an experiment with Building Educated Leaders for Life (BELL), an intensive summer learning program. They randomly chose a group of low-performing elementary school children from Boston and New York City to use the BELL program. These kids received math and reading instruction during the summer (a control group followed their normal summer routine).
The researchers found that the BELL program did have an impact on the achievement gap; students using BELL gained about a month’s worth of reading skills compared to kids in the control group. Also, parents of children in the BELL program were more likely to encourage their kids to read.
The foundation and the researchers believed that this study provided evidence for increased funding for summer programming for low-income children, such as that now offered by the 21st Century Community Learning Centers and Title 1 of No Child Left Behind.
Most notably, this study was cited in the “Summer Term Education Programs for Upward Performance (STEP UP) Act of 2007,” introduced by then-Senator Barack Obama and signed into law by President Bush as part of the "America COMPETES Act". The STEP UP Act “authorize(s) resources to provide students with opportunities for summer learning through summer learning grants.”