The Effects of Summer Reading on Low-Income Children's Literacy Achievement From Kindergarten to Grade 8: A Meta-Analysis of Classroom and Home Interventions

(2013). The effects of summer reading on low-income children's literacy achievement from Kindergarten to Grade 8: A meta-analysis of classroom and home interventions, Abstract This meta-analysis reviewed research on summer reading interventions conducted in the United States and Canada from 1998 to 2011. The synthesis included 41 classroom-and home-based summer reading interventions, involving children from kindergarten to Grade 8. Compared to control group children, children who participated in classroom interventions, involving teacher-directed literacy lessons, or home interventions, involving child-initiated book reading activities, enjoyed significant improvement on multiple reading outcomes. The magnitude of the treatment effect was positive for summer reading interventions that employed research-based reading instruction and included a majority of low-income children. Sensitivity analyses based on within-study comparisons indicated that summer reading interventions had significantly larger benefits for children from low-income backgrounds than for children from a mix of income backgrounds. The findings highlight the potentially positive impact of classroom-and home-based summer reading interventions on the reading comprehension ability of low-income children. Progress (NAEP) in Grade 4 reading, low-income children scored approximately three-fourths of a standard deviation lower, on average, than middle-income children; in Grade 8 reading, this gap was 65% of a standard deviation (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). Reardon (2011) analyzed data from 19 nationally representative data sets and found that income-based disparities in student reading achievement have grown larger over the past four decades. Although there are many underlying causes of income-based disparities in reading, low-income children are particularly at risk of falling behind their classmates in reading during the summer Effective summer interventions may be critical to improving children's reading achievement from kindergarten to Grade 8, particularly for low-income children. Policymakers have adopted two primary intervention strategies for improving children's reading achievement during the summer months: classroom-and home-based summer reading interventions. Classroom-based summer reading interventions are designed to remediate children's academic weaknesses through instructional activities led by schoolteachers, college and graduate students, and university researchers. A meta-analysis of experimental studies (Cooper, Charlton, Valentine, & Muhlenbruck, 2000) indicated that classroom-based summer reading programs improved student achievement by .14 standard deviations. More recently, home-based summer reading interventions have been implemented as a potentially cost-effective strategy for preventing reading loss among low-income children (McCombs et al., 2011). Running head: SUMMER READING META-ANALYSIS 4 ! During the past decade, the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 has created strong accountability pressures for schools to close achievement …