#  Summer School as an Academic Recovery Strategy After COVID-19: Evidence from Summer 2023 

 



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 **Date:** 12/12/2025 

 

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This report examines the effectiveness of summer school as a strategy for academic recovery in the third summer following COVID-19, drawing on data from summer 2023 programs across eight large U.S. school districts serving more than 400,000 students. Using value-added models and NWEA MAP Growth assessments, the study finds that summer school participation continued to yield modest but statistically significant gains in math achievement (about 0.024 standard deviations on average), while producing no overall improvement in reading. Despite slightly lower participation rates and reduced instructional dosage compared to summer 2022, math impacts were remarkably consistent across years and districts. Importantly, the analysis shows that students who attended summer school for two consecutive years generally benefited as much or more in the second year as first-time attendees, suggesting no clear diminishing returns. While the gains remain small relative to the scale of pandemic-related learning loss, the report concludes that summer school remains one of the few recovery strategies capable of reaching a substantial share of students at scale, particularly for improving math outcomes, and should be paired with other interventions to accelerate recovery.



 

 

 See also:- [ Research and Reports ](/resource-type/research-report)
- [ Working Papers ](/resource-type/working-papers)
- [ Researcher ](/audience/researcher)
- [ School/District Leader ](/audience/schooldistrict-leader)
- [ COVID-19 Impact ](/focus-areas/covid-19-impact)
- [ Road to Recovery Project ](/projects/road-recovery-project)
- [ 2025 ](/year/2025)
- [ K12 ](/sector/k12)