Delayed Effects of a Low-Cost and Large-Scale Summer Reading Intervention on Elementary School Children's Reading Comprehension

Abstract

To improve the reading comprehension outcomes of children in high poverty schools, policymakers need to identify reading interventions that show promise of effectiveness at scale.This study evaluated the effectiveness of a low-cost and large-scale summer reading intervention that provided comprehension lessons at the end of the school year and stimulated home-based summer reading routines with narrative and informational books. We conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 59 elementary schools, 463 classrooms, and 6,383 second and third graders and examined outcomes on the North Carolina End-of-Grade (EOG) reading comprehension test administered nine months after the intervention, in the children's third-or fourth-grade year. We found that on this delayed outcome, the treatment had a statistically significant impact on children's reading comprehension, improving performance by .04 SD (standard deviation) overall and .05 SD in high poverty schools. We also found, in estimates from an instrumental variables analysis, that children's participation in home-based summer book reading routines improved reading comprehension. The cost-effectiveness ratio for the intervention compared favorably to existing compensatory education programs that target high poverty schools.

Effectiveness of Structured Teacher Adaptations to an Evidence‐Based Summer Literacy Program

“…Adherence to the core lesson components was high across both a lesson using a narrative text (lesson 1) and a lesson using an informational text (lesson 4). On average, Core READS teachers implemented 87% of the essential lesson elements, compared with 83% for Adaptive READS teachers, and adherence levels across both schools was comparable to our previous studies (Kim et al., ; White et al., ). High overall adherence may have been due, in part, to the closeness with which most teachers stuck to the lesson scripts, often reading them verbatim.…”

“…Importantly, however, teachers in both conditions demonstrated high fidelity to the six READS lessons that previous READS studies have demonstrated are critical to the success of the intervention and are teachers’ primary responsibility in Core READS (Kim & White, ). Although teachers in Adaptive READS schools made some changes to the lessons, they also enacted over 80% of the essential lesson elements, which is comparable to previous READS studies (Kim et al., ). At the same time, there were modest but statistically significant differences suggesting that Adaptive READS teachers taught longer lessons and were less likely to read from the lesson plans.…”

“…**p < .01. ***p < .001. of the essential lesson elements, compared with 83% for Adaptive READS teachers, and adherence levels across both schools was comparable to our previous studies (Kim et al, 2016;White et al, 2014). High overall adherence may have been due, in part, to the closeness with which most teachers stuck to the lesson scripts, often reading them verbatim.…”

“…Each READS book came with a trifold that included three multiple‐choice comprehension questions about the book. The validity of the trifold measure as a predictor of reading comprehension was demonstrated in a previous study of READS (Kim et al., ). Instrumental variables analysis showed that trifold returns had a causal impact on students’ reading comprehension scores on the North Carolina end‐of‐grade reading assessment the following spring.…”

“…Using a cluster randomized controlled trial, we compared two READS conditions: a core treatment condition that directly replicated implementation procedures used in previous experiments (Core READS) and a core treatment with structured teacher adaptations condition (Adaptive READS). We recruited 27 high‐poverty schools to participate in this study, given previous research showing larger effects of READS in high‐poverty contexts (Kim et al., ; White, Kim, Kingston, & Foster, ). Participating schools were located in two large metropolitan school districts, three midsized urban districts, and two rural districts.…”