The summer slide has worried educators for decades.
Today, with the vast majority of schools providing every student with a Chromebook, iPad, or other device, some are sending students home for the summer with their machine.
For some school leaders, the thinking is that the right mix of guidance and educational technology can combat summer learning loss. For others, the policy is about equity, ensuring every student has access to a laptop they can use to complete required summer assignments.
Can sending laptops home with kids limit the summer slide?
There’s potential for school-issued devices “to provide access to high-quality instructional materials and experiences,” said D’Andre Weaver, vice president and chief powerful learning officer at Digital Promise, a technology-focused nonprofit.
“But teachers, principals, districts, and superintendents have to pair that with the devices, so the devices don’t get used for meaningless activities,” he said.
For Susan Neuman, a professor of childhood education and literacy development at New York University, sending laptops home with students over the summer offers no guarantee they’ll use them to learn. She has researched and taught early childhood policy, curriculum, and instruction and recommends that schools use a lower-tech approach: provide a list of books for children at each grade level to read over the summer.
“There’s an assumption that laptops are cool, or might provide more opportunities for learning,” she said. But, “a good book can be a learning tool [and] an exciting opportunity for students to read and get better.”
There’s also no convincing equity argument for sending devices home at the end of the school year, she said.
“Every single student that I know, especially as I get older, has a mobile device, so access is not an issue any longer,” she said.
Education Week spoke with four assistant principals whose schools provide students with laptops over the summer to learn why and how it’s been working.
Two schools with different strategies for summer learning
Dana Mulligan, assistant principal of Woodland Regional High School in Beacon Falls, Conn., said allowing students to keep laptops over the summer lets them work on their academic skills.
Students receive extra credit for completing math and language assignments during the summer.
“It’s that hope that they’ll continually keep up with that academic [work], especially those things where repetition is necessary,” she said.
Others who take advanced-level coursework, such as Advanced Placement and early college classes, have mandatory assignments before the school year starts. Through their school-issued laptops, students have access to teachers who have signed up to be available during the summer to answer any questions about the assignments.
“Teachers are also very mindful of the assignments that they’re giving to make sure that students would be able to [complete them] on their own,” she said.
Because students complete the assignments online, teachers can easily see how many students follow through.
The Connecticut assistant principal said that over the years, the school has fluctuated between making assignments mandatory over the summer and not. In the end, the school settled on their current strategy, which does not make summer work mandatory but she’s realized that giving students the opportunity and offering an incentive is beneficial for them.
“We acknowledge that students need a break and the summer is a time to get a break, but we also acknowledge the summer slip,” she said.
Penn High School in Mishawaka, Ind., has a more specific use for the laptops during the summer, said Josiah Parker, the assistant principal.
The school in northern Indiana, with 3500 students offers them online classes that they can complete with school laptops —specifically “catch-up” or “get-ahead” courses like health and physical education, personal finance, or computer science. The health portion is done online and the P.E. portion can be done in person, said Parker.
Students receive course instructions, such as completing a specific number of units a day. The school hires teachers to be available during the summer to answer questions and check in with students. Students take the final exam in person at the end of the summer.
About half of each grade class—freshmen through junior year—take advantage of the online course options each year, Parker said.
Since the school adopted 1-to-1 devices more than 15 years ago, it also started offering classes related to Chromebook repair and management. In these courses, students learn how to troubleshoot and maintain the technology infrastructure of Chromebook computers.
At some schools, there are no summer assignments, but students take home a laptop
Streator Township High School in Streator, Ill., has been handing out laptops for students to keep during the summer for almost a decade, said Nick McGurk, the assistant principal.
There are no summer assignments and the laptops maintain features as they would in school like blocking dangerous sites, he said.
Since the school serves mostly low-income students who live in rural areas, the school thought it would be helpful to let them keep the laptops.
“Most of the kids have phones,” said McGurk. “They’re not going to spend much time on their Chromebook compared to their mobile device.”
But in the case that some more impoverished kids don’t have a phone—the laptops could be helpful for them, McGurk added. “Families in poverty, if they can’t afford phones, if they can get on some Wi-Fi, [students] have access to some type of outside world with the Chromebook,” he said.
At the end of their four years at the school, students can keep their laptops. “If a kid is going to college and they can’t afford a new Mac or Dell, this can at least get them going,” he said.
At Woodland Middle School in Brentwood, Tenn., Assistant Principal William Toungette said students receive a summer scholar guide with suggestions for activities at each grade level. One science activity, for example, has students pick their favorite snack or meal and research all the ingredients are in the food.
“It’s suggested topics that kids [can do when they] have some time,” he said. “Of course they [can] do it primarily digitally [or] in the old days, we might have used the library or an encyclopedia.”
Are parents OK with their kids coming home for the summer with laptops?
For the most part, parents are on board with students taking home laptops over the summer, school leaders told Education Week.
“At this point, it’s a normal practice in our district,” said Mulligan, from Woodland Regional High School. “A parent would be surprised if their student didn’t come home with their laptop.”
At Penn High School, Parker, on the other hand, has heard from teachers that some parents have requested paperwork instead of online assignments. And that can be a challenge, as the school shifted away from physical textbooks when it adopted 1-to-1 devices.
“But over the last several years, it’s kind of started to swing back a little bit, so there have been a few more teachers requesting textbooks, even if it’s just classroom sets, or for their classroom,” he said.
What schools can do so summer laptops support learning
At schools that send devices home over the summer, computers can be helpful when teachers also provide resources and guides for learning, said Weaver at Digital Promise.
“There’s certainly a gap in access, and then a gap in the knowledge,” he said. “In cases where the knowledge is not strong, then you will see those devices used in other ways, [like] gaming [or] social media.”
Schools should provide take-home resources that illustrate the devices’ best use. The devices should also be preloaded with evidence-based applications that allow students to practice academic skills, Weaver said.
“There are math products now where learners can practice their skills and progress to the next grade-level content right from their device,” he said.
