A recent New York Times report summed up the situation this way: “The kindergarten crisis of last year, when millions of 5-year-olds spent months outside of classrooms, has become this year’s reading emergency.”
If a 1st-grader doesn’t recognize letters, sounds and numbers because they missed much of kindergarten, they could be playing catch up for a long time. If their 1st-grade teacher has to re-teach kindergarten skills, then their 2nd-grade teacher will be spending time on 1st-grade skills.
If younger children aren’t reading on grade-level in 3rd grade or by the end of elementary school, they invariably will have trouble in science, social studies and English classes. Students who struggle with math in high school too often drop out or don’t go on to college. These results are predictable — we don’t need more studies to document what’s common sense.
Just the same, 8th-graders who struggled with math online when schools were closed or because they had to quarantine, are going to have a tough time with high-school algebra and higher-level math.
One way to help students catch up is through summer and afterschool programs. Creating an opportunity to make up for lost time in the classroom, we have to leverage that out-of-school time.
The members Montgomery County’s Summer and Afterschool Collaborative, a collective group of out-of-school-time program professionals, are committed to delivering quality summer and afterschool programs countywide. All of them are committed to making good use of students’ free time; they understand that their work has become even more important than before the pandemic. Learn to Earn Dayton is a committed partner eager to support them and help find the funding it takes to do this necessary work.
Because research shows that children can make significant academic gains if they’re given targeted and personalized tutoring, Learn to Earn is helping establish pilot programs at Dayton Public Schools’ Wogaman Middle School and Thurgood Marshall High School, with the support of the YMCA and also Revival Center Ministries. The YMCA and Revival Center Ministries are hiring qualified teachers and using evidence-based curriculum to work with young people to improve especially their math and reading skills, while also providing appropriate recreational experiences.
Thanks to funding from a federal 21st Century grant and generous local support from The Dayton Foundation, many Dayton students this summer will be able to learn in small groups and get one-on-one attention, which is critical to making meaningful gains and repositioning students’ academic trajectory.
Of course, summer and afterschool programs understand that to get students engaged, it can’t be all rigor and no fun. That’s why they’re incorporating in time for sports, field trips and fun.
These programs will target students who have fewer opportunities. It’s these young people who have been hit hardest by the pandemic, and many of them were already struggling in school — before remote learning, school closures, teacher shortages and quarantines.
Our community is fortunate to have so many summer and afterschool providers that aren’t waiting on results from the next proficiency test to prove that too many kids — especially Black and Brown children — have been severely impacted socially, emotionally and academically by the pandemic. They’re rising to the challenge now. But they can’t be successful on their own. Out-of-School time programs need funding, collective commitment from other helping agencies and acknowledgement that there is no quick fix to mitigate the lost children have endured
Maya Dorsey is Director of Equity and Collaborative Impact at Learn to Earn Dayton.
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