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The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.

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Program Description

Overview The Summer Bridge (SB) program in Chicago, Illinois, is a central component of Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) efforts to end social promotion. The goal of the program is to give low-achieving students the extra help they need to remediate poor skills and meet test-score cutoffs for promotion to the next grade.
Start Date summer 1997
Scope local
Type summer/vacation
Location urban
Setting public schools
Participants elementary and middle school students (grades 3, 6, and 8)
Number of Sites/Grantees about 400 elementary schools
Number Served over 21,000 per year in 1997–2000
Components All CPS students scoring below a given test score on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) are required by CPS to attend SB. The initial promotional test score cutoffs were 1 year below grade level for third graders, 1.5 years below grade level for sixth graders, and 1.8 years below grade level for eighth graders. Special education students and students in bilingual education for 4 years or less (3 years or less prior to 1999) are exempt from the policy. Third and sixth graders attend SB 3 hours per day, 5 days per week, for 6 weeks. Eighth graders attend 4 hours per day, 5 days per week, for 7 weeks. Students are taught by regular CPS teachers in classes of approximately 16–18 students.

The SB curriculum is closely aligned with the ITBS. Teachers are not given any flexibility in deviating from the prescribed curriculum but can tailor it to their students’ needs. For example, teachers are allowed to emphasize reading if most of their students only need to pass the reading cutoff score. The reading curriculum focuses on developing reading comprehension concepts (e.g., main idea, inference) and skills by using a variety of reading materials repeatedly over the course of the summer. The math curriculum focuses on problem solving, data interpretation, and computation and provides instruction in both the application of basic math computation skills and in analysis and estimation.
Funding Level $34 million per summer in 1997
Funding Sources Chicago Public Schools


Evaluation

Overview The 1997–2000 evaluation aimed to determine the program’s short- and long-term impacts, how these impacts varied for student subpopulations, and the nature of students’ and teachers’ experiences in SB as well as the overall learning environment.
Evaluators Melissa Roderick, Mimi Engel, Jenny Nagaoka, Susan Stone, Consortium on Chicago School Research
Evaluations Profiled Ending Social Promotion: Results From Summer Bridge

Getting It Right the Second Time Around: Student Classroom Experience in Chicago’s Summer Bridge Program
Evaluations Planned Future evaluations will examine outcomes for students retained under CPS’ policies, many of whom attended SB.
Report Availability Roderick, M., Engel, M., & Nagaoka, J. (2003). Ending social promotion: Results from Summer Bridge. Chicago: Consortium on Chicago School Research. Available at www.consortium-chicago.org/publications/p59.html.

Stone, S. I., Engel, M., Nagaoka, J., & Roderick, M. (2005). Getting it right the second time around: Student classroom experience in Chicago’s Summer Bridge Program. Teachers College Record, 107, 935–957.


Contacts

Evaluation Melissa Roderick, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, University of Chicago
Consortium on Chicago School Research
1313 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773-702-1171
Fax: 773-702-2010
Email: m-roderick@uchicago.edu
Program Chicago Public Schools
Department of School and Regions
125 S. Clark
10th Floor
Chicago, IL 60603
Tel: 773-553-2150
Fax: 773-553-2151
Profile Updated May 19, 2006

Evaluation 2: Getting It Right the Second Time Around: Student Classroom Experience in Chicago’s Summer Bridge Program


Evaluation Description

Evaluation Purpose To examine how low-performing youth attending SB perceived their summer learning environments.
Evaluation Design Non-Experimental: The study drew on three data sources: (a) surveys of 7,265 sixth graders and 6,128 eighth graders in CPS during the 1998–1999 school year (response rate of 56%); (b) surveys of 4,829 sixth graders and 4,225 eighth graders who attended SB in 1999 (response rates of 65% and 68%, respectively); and (c) interviews with 48 low-achieving African American and Latino sixth and eighth graders who attended SB at five schools. Of the schools that participated in the summer-school survey, over 80% also participated in the school year survey. In these schools, evaluators obtained school-year surveys for roughly half of sixth (n = 2,519) and eighth (n = 2,203) graders (the matched sample). African American students were underrepresented, as schools with high enrollments (greater than 80%) of African American students were less likely to complete both the school-year and summer surveys.
Data Collection Methods Interviews/Focus Groups: Youth interviews were conducted on three occasions: in the spring prior to ITBS testing (baseline), immediately after taking the ITBS, and during the summer. The first two interviews focused on how students were preparing for the ITBS test, their classwork and attitudes toward school, and their expected performance on the test. The third interviews focused on the nature and quality of youth’s learning experiences in summer school and the extent to which youth believed they received support from their teachers over the summer.

Surveys/Questionnaires: The summer survey repeated two item banks from the regular school-year survey that were meant to assess: a) classroom academic orientation (academic press, e.g., agreement with statements that their teacher “expects me to do my best all the time”); and b) the level of personal support students received from teachers (personalism, e.g., agreement with statements that their teacher “notices if I have trouble learning something”). For each measure, responses to multiple questions were combined into a single scale that ranged from 0 to 10 and these scores were then placed on a common metric to allow for comparison between the regular school year and SB. The summer survey also queried youth about their experience in SB, their attitudes toward testing, and their perceptions of support from teachers and parents, and asked them to compare their SB classrooms to those they experienced during the regular school year.

Tests/Assessments: ITBS test score data were obtained from CPS records.
Data Collection Timeframe Data were collected in 1999.


Findings:
Formative/Process Findings

Program–School Linkages Approximately three quarters of SB participants (78% of sixth graders and 74% of eighth graders) reported that they liked summer school better than the school during the regular academic year.

SB participants reported working harder in summer school than during the regular school year (84% of eighth graders and 81% of sixth graders).

Eighty-eight percent of SB eighth graders and 86% of SB sixth graders felt that their teachers had more time to help them during the summer than during the regular year.

Youth who attended SB in 1999 had lower school-year scores on academic press and personalism than their higher achieving peers. For example, the median score on academic press for sixth graders who met or exceeded the test score cutoffs during the school year was 4.76, whereas the school year score for students who were required to attend SB the following summer was 4.4. After completing SB, these sixth graders’ median score increased to 5.99. Notably, over three quarters of sixth grade SB youth had scores on the academic press measure that were higher than the average sixth grader’s score during the school year. Results for SB eighth graders’ academic press results followed a similar pattern. There was a similar increase for personalism (median shift from 4.6 to 6.4 for eighth graders).

Of youth interviewees, one group of 25 (52%) reported that their SB experiences were better than those during the school year. In these interviews, youth frequently touched on four themes. First, youth reported that their teachers covered more or different content and presented material in ways that improved their understanding (e.g., providing step-by-step instructions) and that this instruction stood out as more positive than many of their past school experiences. Second, these youth commented that teachers slowed the pace of instruction to make sure that most, if not all, youth understood the material. Youth indicated that this slower pace was crucial to their understanding of the material. Third, youth reported getting substantial one-on-one time with their teachers and cited this individualized attention as extremely helpful. Finally, these youth noticed that their skills were improving, frequently in areas in which they felt they had been deficient.

A second group of youth reported that their experiences in SB were similar to those during the school year. These 17 youth (35%) generally reported that SB was helpful but not substantially different in terms of content covered or supports received.

A third smaller group of youth (n = 6, 13%) reported that SB was not helpful. Among these youth, two did not regularly attend and therefore reported gaining little from the program. The other four generally reported finding classes to be boring and did not report learning much.

Youth who had a positive experience with SB were more likely to be eighth graders, but no other demographic or achievement characteristics distinguished this group.
Satisfaction Of the 48 youth in the SB interview sample, 29 (60%) reported liking SB; they stated that they enjoyed it, found it interesting, and generally had fun. These youth were more likely to be eighth graders, but no other demographic or achievement characteristics distinguished this group. The remaining 19 youth (40%) were less enthusiastic about SB; most reported that SB was ‘‘okay,” while others mentioned that they liked SB a little bit, and some said that they were bored. Only 3 youth reported an extreme dislike for SB.
Staffing/Training Youth reported responding to SB teachers’ efforts to make material attainable to them, including meticulous explanations, slowing instruction in a nonstigmatizing manner to ensure that all youth understood concepts and problem-solving steps, and encouraging a peer-supportive culture.


Summative/Outcome Findings

Academic Youth who reported having a positive experience with SB according to interviews had larger gains on the ITBS, on average, than students who reported a neutral or negative experience. Despite these gains, only about half (12 of 25) of youth in the positive-experience group met the test score cutoffs after SB.

Approximately three quarters of SB students reported learning more in SB than they had during the regular school year (73% of sixth graders and 76% of eighth graders).

 

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Published by Harvard Family Research Project