LONGMEADOW, MA (WGGB/WSHM) -- American students have been stuck in a “learning recession” with math and reading scores slipping for more than a decade, even before COVID, according to researchers.

A new ‘Education Scorecard’ released May 13 paints a troubling picture. Researchers from Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth Universities said U.S. schools have been in a learning recession since 2013 - years before COVID. Math and reading scores have been falling ever since.

In Longmeadow, the Richard Salter Storrs Library is turning that warning into action. “Yes, we have a huge summer reading program. I was trying to describe it to someone recently and I was like, it’s kind of like our Black Friday, like it’s when everything gets crazy around here,” said Angela Hicks, children’s department assistant at Richard Salter Storrs Library.

Hicks said keeping kids reading this summer can make a big difference come fall. “I think the most important thing for the summertime is all year they have to read things they don’t want to read. They have to learn things they don’t want to learn. Take the summer to really, really foster what your kids are excited about,” she noted, adding that even reading graphic novels or the back of a cereal box keeps skills sharp.

The ‘Education Scorecard’ researchers said a summer without reading makes it that much harder to catch up in the fall. That’s something homeschooling mom Giselle Wisdom Davey thinks about every day with her own kids. “We stick very closely to routines and we educate pretty much Sunday through Thursday year-round, so we go year-round. A lot of families go year-round because we see that there’s such a benefit,” she said.

Much like Hicks at the library, Wisdom Davey meets her kids where they are. “I think the one greatest benefit that we get with homeschooling is that we can see what is really attracting our children’s engagement and be able to meet them where they’re at, so if we do things a certain way and they don’t like it, it doesn’t resonate with them, we can change tactics,” she explained.

She also builds-in screen-free time, giving learning a chance to win over games and shows. “One thing I would do is you can even just start by saying, ‘We’re going to start with reducing our screen time by having certain evenings out of the week that are completely screen-free,’” Wisdom Davey said.

Children from birth to sixth grade can sign up for the Richard Salter Storrs Library summer reading program. Participants can log the time they spend reading or someone reads to them and receive prizes all summer long.

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