Learning Academy 2021: Coming Back

After sixteen long months of almost no in-classroom learning, Learning Academy came back — and grew. Forty-four students enrolled for the summer of 2021, a jump from the years before it, at a moment when disadvantaged students like the ones BASIC serves needed the boost more than ever.

Full-day classes began July 8, 2021, and ran four weeks, over 100 hours of instruction across four small-group classes: third-grade reading, math, English Language Development, and writing. Masks stayed on; the tables, the bridge-building, the hands-on work all went ahead anyway.

The results, given everything, were strong. All of the third-grade reading students grew in passage fluency, and 92% closed measurable ground toward grade level. Math and writing students improved too, though English Language Development gains were harder to hold onto after a year and a half away from a classroom.

Thirty-eight of the forty-four enrolled students completed the full twenty-day program — fewer than a typical summer, a reminder of how much the previous year had disrupted, but still most of a cohort that had come back to a full-day program for the first time since the pandemic began.

Students enrolled

44

Students completed

38

3rd grade fluency growth

100%

Classes offered

4