Effects of a Voluntary Summer Reading Intervention on District Policy and Student Outcomes

James Kim

Numerous empirical studies indicate that minority and low-income children fall behind in reading during summer vacation, causing the achievement gap to widen in the elementary grades. To prevent summer reading losses among minority and low-income students, I collaborated with practitioners to develop, implement, and test a voluntary summer reading intervention for children in Grades 3 to 5. Although recent experimental studies revealed positive effects of the intervention on student reading outcomes, there are two limitations with this earlier work that I seek to address. For this project, I propose conducting analyses that would (1) estimate the cost-effectiveness of the voluntary summer reading intervention relative to a 6-week summer school program, and (2) examine how the variability in the treatment effect is related to differences in children’s reading skills, motivation, and home literacy activities.

About James Kim

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