What Can Principals Do About the Summer Learning Gap?
July 21, 2025
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By fifth grade, students most affected by the summer learning gap may be 2.5 to 3 years behind their peers academically. Every summer, many students lose the hard-won academic gains they’ve made, thanks to a phenomenon known as summer learning loss. This seasonal slide quietly accumulates year after year, leading to a widening summer gap that is difficult to overcome without intentional action.
As school leaders, principals are uniquely positioned to disrupt this cycle. Your leadership, vision, and strategic decisions can be the difference between students falling behind or leaping ahead. Whether you’re looking to launch a new summer program or strengthen an existing one, your influence can have a direct impact on summer learning gap recovery and long-term student success.
In this article, you’ll learn about evidence-based strategies and engaging, movement-rich resources that help you and your staff prevent the summer slide for your students.
The summer learning gap, often referred to as the summer slide or summer learning loss, is the decline in academic skills and knowledge that occurs during the summer months. The summer slide affects core subjects, like math and reading, with students sometimes losing up to two to three months of progress. This regression is a significant issue, and its adverse effects roll into the following school year.
To identify and measure the summer learning gap, educators and researchers often use metrics such as:
Over time, repeated cycles of summer learning loss can create lasting achievement gaps that persist into middle and high school. That’s why summer learning gap recovery is more than just a summer goal—it’s a crucial part of long-term student success.
Related Reading: Pandemic Learning Loss: A Review for 2025
The summer slide is a widespread challenge in the US. For school leaders, addressing summer learning loss is key to promoting equity and driving meaningful learning gap recovery.
On average, students lose the equivalent of one month of learning over summer break. In fact, students can lose between 17–28% of their ELA gains and a striking 25–34% of their math gains during the summer months.
And these numbers aren’t outliers—more than half of all U.S. students experience learning losses each summer, making this a national concern for educators.
While the summer learning gap affects students across the board, it doesn’t affect them equally. The summer slide tends to have a disproportionate impact on students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
These children generally have fewer opportunities for structured summer learning. Oftentimes, they have limited access to books, educational internet resources, and enrichment activities. Working adults may be unable to provide adequate supervision and support to their children. As a result, the summer gap becomes a significant driver of long-term achievement inequality.
Summer learning loss also worsens existing educational disparities for students with disabilities. Compared to their general education peers, who may lose 0.4 to 0.8 RIT points over the summer, students with disabilities can lose as much as 1.2 to 2.1 RIT points per month. This dramatic difference highlights the importance of tailoring summer support to meet the needs of all learners.
The effects of the summer learning gap extend far beyond academics. Without the structure of school, children may lack access to nutritious meals, physical activity, and mental health support—factors that are crucial for their social, emotional, and physical development. For some families, this seasonal shift can add stress, further impacting students’ readiness to learn when they return in the fall.
As a solution, high-quality summer learning programs can foster social-emotional growth and resilience. Studies have shown a positive correlation between summer learning programs and higher high school graduation rates and increased self-esteem. When students participate in enriching summer programs, they build connections with peers and experience the joy of learning in a low-pressure, supportive environment.
Related Reading: A Principal’s Guide to Learning Loss in 2025
As a principal, you can enact strategies that address the summer learning gap and foster long-term student growth. Your leadership is essential in supporting summer learning investments, aligning resources, and building community participation.
Your role in implementing summer learning experiences will likely include:
With strategic leadership and a focus on equity, principals ensure their summer programs are meaningful, effective, and responsive to the needs of every learner.
To effectively combat the summer learning gap, principals need proven interventions that deliver results. The following strategies are practical, evidence-based, and designed to help principals create impactful summer programs to prevent the summer slide.
The first step to preventing the summer slide is becoming familiar with today’s summer learning loss statistics. Knowing which subjects and students are affected most allows you to make strategic decisions for your school.
When designing your summer learning program, be sure to use current assessment data from your school in order to target your students’ specific needs. This approach supports summer learning gap recovery by focusing efforts where they’re needed most. Summer programs should also align with school-wide academic goals and standards.
A study by the RAND Corporation found that students who attended voluntary, district-led summer learning programs entered school in the fall with stronger math skills than those who did not participate in the programs. Another study revealed that structured summer reading can substantially improve reading comprehension, especially for children from low-income backgrounds.
With a data-driven, comprehensive program, you can make a big difference for students in preventing the summer slide.
Project-based learning (PBL) is a powerful way to deepen learning over the summer. By centering instruction around meaningful, real-world challenges, PBL helps close the summer learning gap while making education feel relevant and exciting.
Effective PBL encourages the exploration of complex questions and often involves collaboration, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving. Students apply their knowledge in practical ways, building both academic and life skills—key elements in addressing summer learning loss.
Summer camps and less formal settings are ideal for PBL since they offer flexibility and a more relaxed atmosphere. When students have the chance to present their work to an authentic audience, it adds purpose and motivation to their studies.
Principals can enrich their programs with community-based learning activities that go beyond the classroom. Leveraging local assets, like museums, science centers, parks, and libraries, provides students with hands-on, real-world experiences that support summer learning gap recovery.
Partnering with local organizations and libraries also expands access to resources, programs, and expertise, helping schools close the summer gap with creativity and collaboration.
Educational trips to cultural and historical sites provide experiential learning that reinforces academic skills. Additionally, outdoor education and nature-based activities teach environmental concepts while keeping students active and engaged.
As previously mentioned, any structured reading time during the summer, whether it’s at home or a school program, can improve reading comprehension skills. Prompting regular reading through book clubs, library visits, and summer reading challenges helps prevent the summer slide and reduce summer learning loss.
To support numeracy, principals can encourage guardians to incorporate math into everyday activities, such as cooking, shopping, or playing games. Simple routines offer valuable opportunities to practice skills in meaningful, real-life contexts.
Another highly effective way to support literacy and numeracy fluency is through movement-based learning strategies. Movement-based learning allows students to explore concepts with their full bodies while adding an element of play. It’s a form of experiential learning, meaning that students get to learn through direct experience rather than passive instruction.
Kinesthetic activities increase oxygen-rich blood flow throughout the body and to the brain, which in turn boosts learning comprehension and memory retention. Movement stimulates the release of a protein known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which helps form and maintain neural pathways that carry information.
Additionally, a recent study by the National Math Foundation found that movement-based activities significantly increased student engagement, compared to traditional classroom activities. This makes these types of activities ideal for summer learning, as children want to be active and have fun.
Ready to bring movement-based learning to your core subjects? Discover our Math and Literacy Kits, designed to ignite engagement and boost student achievement.
Our kits supplement your curriculum and provide comprehensive resources for:
For principals aiming to build impactful summer programs, securing the right resources is essential. Fortunately, a variety of funding opportunities exist at the federal, state, and local levels to support these efforts and help schools prevent summer learning loss.
Here are some key sources to explore:
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Related Reading: Learning Loss Recovery: District-Wide Strategies for Directors
The summer learning gap remains a pressing challenge, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, principals can bring a positive change to their students’ learning and growth.
At Math & Movement, we believe in equipping schools with the tools they need for their students to succeed and feel confident in learning. Our Summer Learning Kits offer a comprehensive, movement-based approach to learning that is both engaging and effective. These kits provide ready-to-use resources that support math and literacy skills while incorporating physical activity.
By bringing movement into academics, principals can transform their school’s learning environment, making it more dynamic, inclusive, and impactful. Whether used during summer programming or throughout the school year, our Summer Learning Kits help reinforce foundational skills and serve as a proven strategy for preventing the summer slide.
Want to head deeper into the research and results behind Math & Movement? Explore our Program Data page to see how schools across the US are transforming student achievement with our kinesthetic learning strategies.
Take the next step in summer learning gap recovery. Discover how Math & Movement can help you reduce the summer gap and ensure every student returns to school ready to thrive.
Principals can help prevent the summer slide for their students by:
Educators can identify and measure learning gaps by studying metrics such as:
Students lose between 17-28% of their ELA gains and 25-34% of their math gains from the prior school year during the following summer. Losses may be greater for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
The summer achievement gap refers to the widening difference in academic performance between students from higher-income and lower-income families as a result of summer break from school.
During the summer, students from affluent backgrounds are often able to keep learning through enrichment activities, reading, and camps. Meanwhile, students from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to lack access to educational opportunities.
Over time, these seasonal disparities accumulate and contribute to a larger overall achievement gap seen in middle and high school.
By fifth grade, students most affected by the summer learning gap may be 2.5 to 3 years behind their peers academically. The summer gap leads to:
Suzy Koontz, CEO and Founder of Math & Movement, has spent over 25 years helping students achieve academic success. She has created over 200 kinesthetic teaching tools adopted by schools nationwide and has authored over 20 books. As a sought-after national presenter, Suzy shares how movement can transform the way students learn.
Movement isn't just for recess
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