Free Programs to Prevent Children’s ‘Summer Slide’
By Sandra Esquivel
If your kids love chilling during the summer, surfing the web or getting their fix of video games, there’s a good chance they’re forgetting a lot of what they learned during the school year. It’s called summer slide and education experts say it’s a problem.
“Because they don’t have those activities those resources to keep them stimulated they lose about two to three months of what they learned during the school year,” said Webber Charles with Breakthrough Miami. The program is aimed at helping low-income children succeed academically.
Breakthrough Miami offers a free summer camp at Ransom Everglades. During camp, kids play games and sports but they also have classwork including math and history. Program leaders say children who don’t get this type of stimulation during the summer break are falling behind—especially low income kids who may not have access to summer camps.
“What you have is this kind of cumulative damage to low income students where they’re losing two to three months a year every summer. By the time you get to ninth grade that explodes into a huge achievement gap between low income kids and middle income and high income students,” Charles said.