Voluntary summer-learning programs can help narrow academic achievement gaps between children from low-income families and those from high-income families, a report from the Wallace Foundation and the RAND Corporation finds. The report, Learning From Summer: Effects of Voluntary Summer Learning Programs on Low-Income Urban Youth (109 pages, PDF), found that in five urban districts participating in Wallace’s $50 million National Summer Learning Project, third-grade students who attended a five- to six-week summer program for at least twenty days in 2013 scored modestly higher on state math tests than students who did not participate, and that students who attended for a second summer in 2014 outperformed both groups in math and English Language Arts. For low-income students to experience lasting benefits from such programs, the report recommends that districts run full-day programs for at least five weeks; promote regular attendance, secure sufficient instructional time, and invest in instructional quality; and factor in attendance and likely no-show rates when staffing the programs in order to lower costs.