Assessing the effectiveness of your program in addressing the summer learning slide will help to demonstrate to stakeholders that your participants are making important learning gains. Crafting key messages and sharing success stories with public officials and community leaders can raise awareness of the library leadership role in reaching more kids and addressing the summer learning slide.
Tools and Resources for Assessment
- ULC’s resource, Public Libraries and Effective Summer Learning: Opportunities for Assessment, includes successful and replicable assessment practices modeled by libraries included in this toolkit and others and common library summer learning goals.
- The Executive Summary provides a brief overview of the paper’s seven action steps that libraries can take to initiate assessment of their summer learning programs.
- Several existing assessment tools that could be used to assess the effectiveness of library summer learning programs are included, such as:
- The Public Library Association’s Project Outcome
- The California Library Association’s Outcomes-Based Summer Reading
- STAR Assessment
- DIBELs – Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills
- Devereux Student Strengths Assessment
- DRA – Developmental Reading Assessment Second Edition PLUS
- ULC’s resource, Public Libraries and Effective Summer Learning: Opportunities for Assessment, includes successful and replicable assessment practices modeled by libraries included in this toolkit and others and common library summer learning goals.
Tips and Tools for Crafting and Delivering Key Messages about Your Summer Learning
- Develop a mission statement for your summer learning program and partnership to articulate the purpose and goals of the program for both internal and external stakeholders.
- This Mission-Building Template can be used with team members to help craft a mission statement that defines the contributions of key partners.
- Develop a mission statement for your summer learning program and partnership to articulate the purpose and goals of the program for both internal and external stakeholders.
- Together with the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, the National Summer Learning Association produced a comprehensive brief on Summer Learning Literacy Assessments including details on building collaborations around data and choosing the best assessment for your program, along with other useful information.
Tips and Tools for Crafting and Delivering Key Messages about Your Summer Learning
- Develop a mission statement for your summer learning program and partnership to articulate the purpose and goals of the program for both internal and external stakeholders.
- This Mission-Building Template can be used with team members to help craft a mission statement that defines the contributions of key partners.
- Develop a mission statement for your summer learning program and partnership to articulate the purpose and goals of the program for both internal and external stakeholders.
- Hold a community event or open house. Directors can invite city or county leaders to see what children will be learning.
- Collaborate with grocery stores or other locations frequented by families to distribute flyers or hang up posters.
- Prepare press releases from the library or in conjunction with other organizations working as partners in the summer learning program, or hold a media day. (Tip: Newspapers and media outlets have reporters assigned to cover school districts. This person would be a good contact for coverage of summer learning.)
- Work with parks and recreation departments to publicize summer learning programs, especially in sites where library branches are connected to city or county parks. The Saint Paul Public Library has had a lot of success with this kind of partnership.
- Check out these tips from Broward County and San Francisco Public Libraries on the best messages to deliver and the “secret sauce” for generating awareness and support.
- View these additional resources from the NSLA to develop a vision for summer learning in the library. These resources include planning and funding tools, information about policies that support summer learning and much more with examples of practices that community-wide systems across the country are using to ensure that children are experiencing quality learning opportunities when schools are closed.