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

James S. Kim is an assistant professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a former history teacher in an ethnically diverse middle school, where he served as chair of the history and civics department. His research interests include the use of quantitative methods to assess the effectiveness of compensatory education policies for disadvantaged students and the impact of reading programs on adolescent learning. He is currently undertaking experimental studies of voluntary summer reading, middle school literacy, and teacher professional development in Title I schools.