Learning Academy 2023: Every Student on the Post-Survey

English is not the first language for 89% of Borrego’s students, and for many of them the school year alone isn’t enough time to close the gap between where they are and grade level. That’s the problem Learning Academy exists to chip away at every July, and in the summer of 2023 it did — again.

The program ran July 6 through August 2, 2023, for forty-one students across the same small-group model the Academy has used since it started as a reading-only program: full days, hands-on activities, and instruction built around each student’s actual starting point rather than their grade-level assumption.

The summer, in three photos

On the academic side, every student who took the post-survey reported achieving the program’s academic-improvement goal — a target BASIC sets deliberately high, at 35–50% of students reaching grade equivalent on a standardized test. Word fluency improved for 100% of second- and third-graders, and three-quarters of students finished the summer at grade level.

Attendance held: forty of the forty-one enrolled students hit the program’s 95% attendance goal, the same bar the Academy has held every summer since 2016.