The Effects of Summer Reading on Low-Income Children’s Literacy Achievement From Kindergarten to Grade 8

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 homebased 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 classroomand home-based summer reading interventions on the reading comprehension ability of lowincome children.Keywords: meta-analysis, reading comprehension, low-income children, summer learning loss 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). Snow, & Martin-Glenn, 2006; National Reading Panel, 2000). As a result, policymakers and practitioners have sought to implement summer reading interventions that show strong evidence of efficacy and use research-based instructional practices. Given the national imperative to close income-based disparities in student achievement, there is a growing need to understand the programmatic characteristics of effective summer reading interventions and their potential benefits for low-income children (McCombs et al., 2011). This updated metaanalytic review synthesizes results from 41 summer reading interventions, involving children from kindergarten to Grade 8. Defining Summer Reading InterventionsSummer reading interventions are usually implemented inside or outside classrooms (McCombs et al., 2011). Although context is only one characteristic of a summer reading intervention, theorists (Bronfen...

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