The researchers conducted a randomized experiment involving 824 third-grade children in 14 elementary schools (K-5) to examine the effects of a scaffolded summer reading intervention that provided books matched to children’s reading level and interests and teacher scaffolding in the form of end-of-year comprehension instruction. Within each school, children and teachers were randomly assigned to (a) a control condition involving six math lessons, (b) a treatment condition with six reading comprehension lessons and an after school family literacy event, and (c) an enhanced treatment that also included follow-up phone calls to parents. During summer vacation, children in the treatment conditions received two lesson books and eight matched books. A treatment by socioeconomic status (SES) interaction effect on reading comprehension posttests revealed larger positive effects for children in high poverty schools than children in moderate-high poverty schools. In addition, among a random subsample of children (n = 121) who were part of a home visit study, there were positive treatment effects on the quantity and the diversity of books at home and trends suggested larger effects for children from low SES families. The results highlight the variability in treatment effects across different school and family contexts.

There are large gaps in reading skills by family income among school-aged children in the United States. Correlational evidence suggests that reading skills are strongly related to the amount of reading students do outside of school. Experimental evidence testing whether this relationship is causal is lacking. We report the results from a randomized evaluation of a summer reading program called Project READS, which induces students to read more during the summer by mailing ten books to them, one per week. Simple intent-to-treat estimates show that the program increased reading during the summer, and show significant effects on reading comprehension test scores in the fall for third grade girls but not for third grade boys or second graders of either gender. Analyses that take advantage of within-classroom random assignment and cross-classroom variation in treatment effects show evidence that reading more books generates increases in reading comprehension skills, particularly when students read carefully enough to be able to answer basic questions about the books they read, and particularly for girls.

Academic summer programs are a popular strategy for providing compensatory education for low income students.  While early meta-analytic evidence suggested that summer school was more effective for middle income students than low income students (Cooper et al., 2000), a recent meta-analysis on summer reading programs found the opposite (Kim & Quinn, 2013).  In this paper, we extend Kim & Quinn (2013) by meta-analyzing 13 studies of summer math programs conducted between 1998 and 2011.  We find, consistent with Kim & Quinn's (2013) reading finding, that summer math programs were more effective for low income students than higher income students.  

Theory and empirical work suggest that teachers’ social capital influences school improvement efforts.  Social ties are prerequisite for social capital, yet little causal evidence exists on how malleable factors, such as instructional management approaches, affect teachers’ ties.  In this cluster-randomized trial, we apply a decision-making perspective to compare a literacy intervention managed under a “fidelity-focused” approach, in which teachers were expected to implement researcher-designed procedures faithfully, versus a “structured adaptive” approach, in which teachers collaboratively planned program adaptations.  In the short term, the adaptive approach increased teachers’ accessing of intervention-related social capital, but decreased their accessing of social capital unrelated to the intervention.  Short-term effects varied based on participants’ role in the intervention.  No group differences were found on social capital measures one year later, suggesting that the structured adaptive approach did not make teachers more likely to form ties that would be useful outside of the intervention. 

In a common approach for scaling up effective educational practice, schools adopt evidence-based programs to be implemented with fidelity. An alternative approach assumes that programs should be adapted to local contexts. In this randomized trial of a reading intervention, we study a scaffolded sequence of implementation, in which schools first develop proficiency by implementing the program with fidelity before implementing structured adaptations. We find evidence supporting the scaffolded sequence: a fidelity-focused approach promoted learning and instructional change more so for teachers inexperienced with the intervention, while a structured adaptive approach was more effective for teachers experienced with the intervention. Students benefited more from the structured adaptive approach, but only when their teacher had prior experience with the fidelity-focused version.

The question of whether students’ school-year learning rates differ by race/ethnicity is important for monitoring educational inequality.  Researchers applying different modeling strategies to the same data (the ECLS-K:99) have reached contrasting conclusions on this question.  We outline the similarities and differences across three common approaches to estimating gains and heterogeneity in gains: 1) a gain score model (with intercept), 2) a first-difference (FD) model (in some cases equivalent to regression-through-the-origin [RTO] and student fixed effects models), and 3) a student random effects (RE) model.  We show via simulation that FD/RTO and RE models produce estimates of learning rates, and group differences in learning rates, with more favorable RMSD compared to the gain score model with intercept.  Using data from the ECLS-K:99, we demonstrate that these precision differences lead to contrasting inferences regarding learning rate heterogeneity, and likely explain the inconsistencies across previous studies.     

Early studies examining seasonal variation in achievement inequality generally concluded that socioeconomic test score gaps grew more over the summer than the school year, suggesting schools served as “equalizers.” In this study, we analyze seasonal trends in SES and racial/ethnic test score gaps using nationally-representative data from the ECLS-K:2011, which includes more school-year and summer rounds than previous national studies.  We further examine how inequality dynamics are influenced by the operationalization of inequality. Findings are consistent with a story in which schools initially accelerate relatively lower-achieving groups’ learning more so than higher-achieving groups; however, this school-year equalizing is not consistently maintained, and sometimes reverses.  When we operationalize inequality as changes in relative position, the reversal of school-year equalizing is more pronounced. 

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.