There are two types of academic summer school programs available today. The first is the traditional remediation program where students are remediated in areas in which they tend to struggle. The second type of program is one in which students are front-loaded with the content that they will learn at the beginning of the next school year, effectively giving them a leg up on their peers.

Both of these summer school programs provide great opportunities for student growth, but there are three major reasons why summer school is vital:

1. Opportunities for Academic Advancement

Students who struggle in specific academic areas benefit from a rigorous academic summer program that provides more repetition in the content area where they typically struggle. For English learners, this might mean focusing more on language conventions and speaking and listening. For other students, this might mean providing an in-depth writing program during the summer. Either way, the students who attend summer school will have less summer learning loss and more opportunity for success in the regular school year.

2. Promoting Social Development and Growth

For many students, the summer is a long and lonely period of time spent lounging at home in front of a TV. Summer school provides the opportunity for social development, the chance to make new friends in a typically smaller school population, and it ensures that students are kept out of trouble and not parked in front of a TV.

3. Encouraging the Keeping of Routines and Schedules

Many students believe summer is prime time for staying up late, sleeping until noon, and wearing their pajamas most days of the week. Summer school requires students to stick to a schedule, maintain some routine, and get up and get dressed! Parents also have the added peace of mind knowing where their student is and what he or she is doing for a majority of the day.

The StepUP Academy, created by DataWORKS Educational Research, is a customized, rigorous, and intensive academy that can be designed to remediate or accelerate students at any point during the year.

Whether you are looking to remediate struggling students or looking to give students a boost in the coming year, the DataWORKS StepUP Academy is designed to immerse your students — and teachers — in a powerful training program that will help them step up to the next level of performance.