For kids with sufficient resources, summer is an opportunity to travel to new parts of the globe or explore a new interest. But, as David Von Drehle wrote last year in Time, “for many children – especially children of low-income families – summer is a season of boredom, inactivity and isolation. Kids can’t go exploring if their neighborhoods aren’t safe. It’s hard to play without toys or playgrounds or open spaces.”

Low-income kids not only grapple with boredom; they also tend to regress academically. A Johns Hopkins study concluded that unequal access to meaningful summer learning opportunities accounts for as much as two-thirds of achievement differences between high- and low-income students.

At Breakthrough, our goal is not only to compensate for summer learning loss, but to launch our students far ahead of where they were when the summer started. For six weeks, Breakthrough kids receive four hours of intensive academic instruction daily in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. They also attend elective classes like dance and debate, and take part in special opportunities like Career Day and outdoor education. Their hard work is evident in their remarkable gains on the Stanford 10 assessment this past summer: an average of one school year's worth of progress in reading, and six months' worth of progress in math. Meanwhile, our teaching interns made dramatic growth as well.

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