The good news: Most superintendents plan to sustain or expand their districts’ spending on summer school programs in 2025, an effort that could help many students build on academic skills learned during the school year.
The bad news: Districts will have to find new ways to fund those programs as the federal pandemic relief aid they used in recent years to start new summer offerings or expand existing ones are no longer flowing, meaning they’ll likely need to pull from their district budgets or seek grants.
Those are two key takeaways from the results of a new national survey of superintendents by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, Gallup, and the National Summer Learning Association. The results come at a time when districts are forced to make tough decisions about which programs to keep, cut, or scale back with less funding available. But they suggest that superintendents are committed to summer programming, and believe in the academic and social benefits they bring.
Almost two-thirds of the 421 superintendents who participated in the survey reported using pandemic relief funding on summer programs between the 2021-22 and 2024-25 school years.
Many superintendents said they’d rely on a combination of funding sources to keep those new and expanded programs running. Eighty-one percent of superintendents said they plan to use money from district budgets; 52 percent said they’d use grants, according to the survey, which was conducted from November to January.
The survey also showed the types of programs districts offer in the summer, superintendents’ views on whether there is adequate summer programming in their areas, what district leaders see as the top benefits of summer learning, and how they measure success for their programs.
Here’s what the report found, in charts.
By and large, districts plan to maintain their summer offerings in 2025
Generally, demand has been robust.
About 58 percent of superintendents said their summer programs were at capacity in 2024, and another 5 percent said they were over capacity. The rest (37 percent) said their programs were under-enrolled. About three-quarters of superintendents said the biggest barrier to student participation was conflicts with parents’ work schedules.
There are some differences by district size in the types of summer programming offered, with larger districts—those with 1,000 or more students—more likely to offer summer programming at all.
Most superintendents said their districts offered summer learning programs for remediation (73 percent) and for students with disabilities (55 percent) last summer. A much smaller percentage offered broader programs like summer school for all students (27 percent) and enrichment for high-performing students (24 percent).
Superintendents generally indicated they planned to offer the same types of summer programs this year as they did last year.
Higher-income districts are more likely to have adequate summer programming from outside organizations
Responses did not include information about what other programming might be offered locally by other organizations and companies, aside from the school district, AASA leaders noted. But the survey captured superintendents’ views on whether there’s adequate summer programming in their communities.
Those programs could—and should—work with the school district to ensure the offerings are robust and at least somewhat aligned with the district’s goals and lessons, said Bryan Joffe, the director of children’s programs at AASA.
That alignment is important, as 91 percent of superintendents say summer programs are either very important or important to “reaching strategic goals” in their district. Those goals vary, Joffe said, but often have to do with preparing students for college, careers, and life after high school, such as boosting high school graduation rates.
When asked whether there are adequate summer learning programs for students in their district, superintendents were divided based in part on the median household income in their district. Superintendents in lower- and middle-income districts (where the median household income is less than $81,000) are less likely than their peers in higher-income districts to believe adequate summer learning opportunities are available to their students.
Superintendents say summer programs deliver important benefits to students
Studies have shown that summer programs are effective tools to improve academic outcomes—but that students have to show up for the programs to work, posing a challenge for districts to design a summer program that will draw students. Even more research has shown generally that the more time students spend learning and engaging with academic concepts, the better.
About 73 percent of superintendents primarily view summer school as a way for students to maintain and improve academic skills, as opposed as chiefly a social opportunity, the survey found. (But fun is one important benefit, according to superintendents.)
District leaders said they judge their summer programs’ success based on participating students’ reading and math scores (33 percent), students’ general academic performance at the start of the next academic year (25 percent), and enrollment in the program (25 percent).
