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The Wallace Foundation's National Summer Learning Study, conducted by RAND and launched in 2011, offers the first assessment of district-run voluntary summer programs over the short and long run. This report, the second of five that will result from the study, looks at how summer programs affected student performance on math, reading, and social and emotional assessments in fall 2013.

RAND is conducting a longitudinal study that evaluates the effectiveness of voluntary summer learning programs in reducing summer learning loss, which contributes substantially to the achievement gap between low- and higher-income students. Based on evaluations of programs in six school districts, this second report in a series provides research-based advice for school district leaders as they create and strengthen summer programs.

Research has shown that students'skills and knowledge often deteriorate during the summer months, with low-income students facing the largest losses. School districts and summer programming providers can benefit from the lessons learned by other programs in terms of developing strategies to maximize program effectiveness and quality, student participation, and strategic partnerships and funding.

Many states and school districts are implementing test-based requirements for promotion at key transitional points in students'schooling careers, thus ending the practice of'social promotion'- promoting students who have failed to meet academic standards and requirements for that grade. In 2003-2004, the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE), which oversees the largest public school system in the country, implemented a new test-based promotion policy for 3rd-grade students and later extended it to 5th, 7th, and 8th graders. The policy emphasized early identification of children at risk of being retained in grade and provision of instructional support services to these students. NYCDOE asked RAND to conduct an independent longitudinal evaluation of the 5th-grade promotion policy and to examine the outcomes for two cohorts of 3rd-grade students. The findings of that study, conducted between March 2006 and August 2009, provide a comprehensive picture of how the policy was implemented and factors affecting implementation; the impact of the policy on student academic and socioemotional outcomes; and the links between the policy's implementation and the outcomes of at-risk students. Two other publications in this series provide a review of the prevailing literature on retention and lessons learned about policy design from top-level administrators across the country.