Brain Drain: How Summer Impacts Academic Progress

For parents whose kids go to school in what are often high-achieving districts—municipalities across much of Westchester, Fairfield and New Haven counties, for example—“summer” often means putting learning into a lower gear, and no one would disagree.

For some it may mean completely shutting down.

Here’s a very real question that many families are facing now with the spring (finally) arriving in earnest, as kids take to baseball and softball diamonds, and high-schoolers head off to prom: What, if anything, should I do to keep my children’s minds occupied during the summer? 

Subscribe to S4’s “Thursday Tips” for a quick list of bite-sized answers.

Consider this: A summer of absolutely nothing can impact some of the ways that our children’s academic progress and achievement are measured. For example, studies have shown that kids score lower on standardized tests at the end of the summer, compared with scores received for the same test taken at the beginning of the summer.

And—though we know the tests themselves are now changing with the advent of Common Core and its attendant SBAC—it’s worth understanding how well your own district has fared on standardized tests. Here’s some information for parents in Connecticut and Westchester.

The state Department of Education sees an 88 DIP (that’s “District Performance Index) as desirable, statewide, because it would mean students are, on average, at or above goal on most tests. Now here’s a chart showing how some of our districts have fared, in DPI terms, for the last few years (this is a sampling—if you don’t see your town in this list, you can find it here):

District          CMT 

                      2009-10   2010-11   2011-12   2012-13

Bridgeport     54.8          53.6         55.5          53.7

Danbury         75.6          76.2         77            73.4

Darien            94.3          94.4         94.6          93.6

Fairfield         90.4          90.7          90.8          90.6

Greenwich     89.2          88.7          90.2          89.3

Milford           84.9          85.5          85.7          83.9

New Canaan  94.9          94.6          95.4          95.3

Norwalk         74.8          76.8          78.4          78

Redding         94.1          94.8          94.7          93.4

Ridgefield      93.6          93.7          95.1          93.8

Stamford        74.2          74.7          77            76.6

Stratford        80.8           81.3         82.1         79.4

Weston           92.6          93.6         93.7          93.2

Westport        93.9          93.7          94.1         93.9

West Hartford 86.6         87.1          87.9         86.0

Wilton            94.8          94.3          94.3         93.5

Again: Subscribe to S4’s free“Thursday Tips” to read the full story this week. Contact S4 at 203-307-5455 or info@S4StudySkills.com for more information and study tips.