The Effects of Summer Reading on Low-Income Children’s Literacy Achievement From Kindergarten to Grade 8: A Meta-Analysis of Classroom and Home Interventions

“…we used the WWC standards because they address the major threats to internal validity (i.e., randomization, attrition, equivalence) and are now widely used to evaluate intervention research involving multiple domains of child development (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2010).”

“Such programs have been particularly helpful in boosting reading performance when targeted at low-income (K–8) children (Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“Although the causal evidence is mixed, several recent meta-analyses of experimental and quasi-experimental studies suggested that interventions aimed at improving access to books in the home generally yielded positive impacts (Kim & Quinn, 2013; Lindsay, 2010).”

“If this occurs, differentiation will likely correlate with traditional markers of disparity (Kim and Quinn, 2013) and educational stratification related to household media, digital media, and knowledgeable people as resources for academic achievement.”

“In addition, the review provides robust evidence for the association between HLLE disadvantage and both lowincome and social circumstances (Yoshikawa, 1994; Layzer et al., 2001; McCartney & Dearing, 2002; Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“The codebook was based on previous meta-analytic reviews of literacy intervention studies and prior research indicating the factors that would influence student outcomes (Durlak et al., 2011; Guo et al., 2020; J. S. Kim & Quinn, 2013; Lipsey et al., 2012; Marulis & Neuman, 2013).”

“On the other hand, innovative summer solutions may have a role to play; for example, some evidence suggests that home-based summer reading programs may be a cost-effective alternative to traditional summer school (Kim, Guryan, White, Quinn, Capotosto, & Kingston, 2016; Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“Yet there is growing evidence that summer interventions can help mitigate students’ SLL (Kim & Quinn, 2013; McCombs et al., 2012; McCombs et al., 2015).”

“Other studies have found summer reading programs to be effective, particularly for low-income students (see Kim & Quinn, 2013, for a review), but these programs tend to be costly and often struggle to recruit and retain students and high-quality teachers.”

“…to the diversity of programmes, from book reading (Bus et al., 1995) to family literacy activities (Manz et al., 2010; Sénéchal & Young, 2008; Van Steensel et al., 2011) and to summer home reading programmes (Kim and Quinn, 2013), with many of these programmes targeted at low-income families.”

“This sizeable range of effect sizes is actually common among reviews of summer interventions (e.g., Cooper et al., 2000; Kim & Quinn, 2013; McCombs et al., 2020), and illustrates the inconsistent effectiveness of summer programs.7 Further, a likely reason for the smaller theta score among our…”

“2013), student background variables (Kim and Quinn 2013), the methods and standards used to evaluate the interventions (e.”

“…(Cornelius & Semmel, 1982), falling short of literacy benchmarks (Zvoch & Stevens, 2011, 2013), coming from low SES homes (Johnston, Riley, Ryan, & Kelly-Vance, 2015; Kim & Quinn, 2013), or enrolled in schools with programs to foster summer reading in minority children (Kim & White, 2008).”

“Additionally, the effects were comparable to effects for school-based and home-based summer programs in meta-analyses by Cooper et al. (2000) and Kim and Quinn (2013).”

“It is possible that placing an emphasis on reading in rural schools could help narrow this educational gap, as it seems to have done in certain developed contexts (Kim, 2006; Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“…literacy development observed over the summer months in the previous studies (e.g., Cooper et al., 1996; Downey et al., 2004; Entwisle et al., 1997; Kim & Quinn, 2013) can be exacerbated by the global health crisis, considering the prevailing inequalities and unequal access to learning…”

“There are two common approaches to keeping the learning faucet open and promoting summer learning for low-income children: school (classroom)-based interventions and home-based interventions (Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“In their meta-analysis, Kim and Quinn (2013) estimated the average effect size of the homebased interventions at 0.12 SD. Costs for these programs are much lower than for classroom interventions, such that they have been put forward as scalable and cost-effective policy solutions to mitigate summer…”

“There is an extensive line of research corroborating the association between students ’ SES and their academic achievement (Chung, 2015; Kim & Quinn, 2013; Reardon et al., 2013; Sirin, 2005).”

“…reading programmes, and interventions involving only parents and families (see, e.g., Zief, Lauver, & Maynard, 2006 for a review of after school‐programmes, Kim & Quinn, 2013, for a review of summer reading programmes, and Jeynes, 2012, for a review of programmes that involve families or parents).”

“However, disparate evidence suggests no significant differences between programs that provided greater or fewer than 70 hours of total instruction (Kim & Quinn, 2013), and results of some individual studies showed successful mitigation of SLL with as few as 15 hours of instruction (Beach et al.,…”

“In the domain of literacy, researchers have found that, on average, home-based literacy interventions appear to be equally as effective and more cost-effective than summer school at improving reading outcomes (Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“This was anticipated, and our results were in line with other educational research studies (e.g., Bornstein & Bradley, 2003; Hoff, 2006; Kim & Quinn, 2013; Sirin, 2005).”

“…awareness, orthographic symbol knowledge (knowledge of names and sounds of alphabet letters), orthographic awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming (Apel et al. 2012; Barker et al. 1992; Burgess and Lonigan 1998; Carlisle 2004; Carlisle and Katz 2006; Kim and Quinn 2013).”

“By contrast, Kim and Quinn (2013) found that the impacts of summer reading programs were larger for low-income children than their higher-income counterparts.”

“…summer fluency gains instead align well with meta-analytic findings regarding the benefits of supplemental summer instruction (Cooper et al., 2000; Kim & Quinn, 2013) and other recent summer school effects 451 investigations that have used relatively rigorous designs to examine summer school…”

“…book reading (Mol, Bus, de Jong, & Smeets, 2008), interactive book reading (Mol, Bus, & de Jong, 2009), print exposure (Mol & Bus, 2011), summer reading (Kim & Quinn, 2013), attitudes toward reading (Petscher, 2010), and computer-assisted instruction (Blok, Oostdam, Otter, & Overmaat, 2002).”

“In a more recent meta-analysis of home and summer interventions, Kim and Quinn (2013) found positive and significant effects for comprehension total (d ¼ .13), comprehension only (d ¼ .23), and fluency and decoding combined (d ¼ .24) when calculating effects across the 41 interventions reviewed.”

“…as summer learning loss, or a significant decline in academic skills during the summer months (Alexander, Entwisle, & Olson, 2007; Borman & Dowling, 2006; Cooper, Charlton, Valentine, & Muhlenbruck, 2000; Johnson, Riley, Ryan, & Kelly-Vance, 2015; Kim & Quinn, 2013; Lee, Grigg, & Donahue, 2007).”

“In addition to the sampling bias potentially introduced by differing characteristics of students who do and do not choose to attend or complete summer programs, participants are rarely randomly assigned to treatment and control conditions (Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“If it is the case that reading skills and academic achievement are related, then it would be beneficial to place greater emphasis on reading in rural schools in an attempt to narrow this educational gap, as it seems to have done in certain developed contexts (Kim and Quinn 2013; Kim 2006).”

“Moreover, it has been well established that there is a strong correlation between SES and academic achievement (e.g. Harwell et al., 2017; Kim & Quinn, 2013; Lenkeit et al., 2022).”

“…que ofrecen los clubs de lectura, en sus múltiples formas, para la mejora del gusto por la lectura y la potenciación del hábito lector (McMahon, 1992; Goatley, Brock & Raphael, 1995; Johnsson‐Smaragdi & Jönsson, 2006; Whittingham, & Huffman, 2009; Hill, 2012; Kim & Quinn, 2013; Álvarez, 2015).”

“Meta-analyses show consistently the benefits of parenting practices and home-based learning approaches (such as family literacy activities, talking to children about school) on academic (Kim and Quinn 2013; van Steensel et al. 2011) and social–emotional (Sheridan et al.”

“…slide has suggested that income- related achievement gaps in reading become larger during out- of- school summer months due to loss in reading skills among students of Color and those living in poverty (e.g., Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996; Kim & Quinn, 2013; Kim & White, 2008).”

“Children who are instilled with a parental appreciation for reading from an early age are also more likely to have access to a wide variety of reading materials, ranging from books to magazines to newspapers (Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“In addition to simply increasing access to reading material, a meta-analysis of more formal summer programs, including home-based interventions, found a positive effect of home-based programs on reading comprehension (J. S. Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“In a recent meta-analysis of K-8 classroom-based and home-based summer reading intervention programs, Kim and Quinn (2013) found a more positive impact on the reading ability of low-income children than the reading ability of children from a mix of income backgrounds.”

“These results expand on previous research on the implementation of research-based reading instruction during summer reading programs (Johnston et al., 2015; Kim & Quinn, 2013) and the impact of individually administered interventions on students’ reading performance (Slavin et al., 2011).”

“Intervention effects have been more significant in well-resourced studies, as compared to studies with fewer resources (Kim and Quinn, 2013).”

“A variety of home and school summer programs intended to keep that instructional faucet running have shown positive effects in reading (Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“However, a synthesis of 41 studies of summer reading programs found that teacher-directed literacy instruction was associated with more significant student improvement than sending books home to be read independently (Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“As increasing the focus on reading has been shown to be beneficial for educational outcomes in developed countries, it is possible that this could have a similar effect in rural China and, therefore, narrow China’s educational gap (Kim and Quinn 2013; Kim 2006).”

“Specifically, it has been found that rural students consistently perform worse than urban students in core academic subjects such as math and science (Kleiman-Weiner et al., 2013; Lai et al., 2009; Li et al., 2015; Qian & Smyth, 2008).”

“The literature has indicated certain risk factors such as children with a lower socioeconomic status (regardless of disability) are more vulnerable to summer regression in academic achievement (Celano & Neuman, 2008; Kim & Quinn, 2013; Slates et al., 2012; Smith, 2012).”

“Potential loss of knowledge and skills during weekends (or summer breaks) has long been a concern (Alexander et al., 2007; Cooper et al., 1996; Kim & Quinn, 2013), in particular for students with LD (Faught et al., 2016; Hunt & Vasquez, 2014; Ritchie & Karge, 1996).”

“Additionally, research has shown that providing access to materials with explicit, direct instruction in reading and math improves academic success for students who are struggling (Clements, Fuson, & Sarama, 2017; Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“These students also lack access to extended-day and summer programming (Kim & Quinn, 2013); specifically, they tend to have fewer opportunities for literacy support and enrichment outside of the typical school year (Allington & McGill-Franzen, 2017).”

“De plus, l’effet de la fermeture des écoles est d’autant plus important que les élèves sont plus vulnérables socialement (6) ou du fait de problèmes de santé (7).”

“In particular, young students faced with economic hardship often have summer reading loss caused by a gap in learning opportunities (Kim & Quinn, 2013; McDaniel et al., 2017).”

“Providing students from underserved populations with intensive, evidence-based interventions during the summer has shown to positively counter-act the summer slide in reading achievement (Cooper et al., 1996; Kim & Quinn, 2013).”

“This persistent problem (see review by Kim & Quinn, 2013) has been exacerbated by COVID-19 due to interrupted or absent reading instruction, disproportionally impacting students from historically marginalized communities (Kuhfeld et al., 2022).”

“…in school (Aram, Korat, & Hassunah-Arafat, 2013; Baharudin & Luster, 1998; Bradley, Caldwell, & Rock, 1988; Li & Tan, 2016; Sammons et al., 2015), particularly with respect to reading activities in the home and children ’ s literacy (Axford et al., 2019; Kim & Quinn, 2013; Yeo et al., 2014).”

“Summer learning loss has been documented for more than 40 years (e.g., Bell & Carillo, 2007; Cooper et al., 1996, 2000; Davies et al., 2015; Davies & Aurini, 2013; Kim & Quinn, 2013; Lauer et al., 2006; Meyer et al., 2017; Sobeck, 2017).”

“In a metaanalysis of the effects of summer reading on low-income children, Kim and Quinn (2013) found that children from low-income homes experienced larger effects of summer reading interventions (e.g., participation in summer camp programs with a literacy focus) than children from middle- or…”

“Similar reviews on the effect of summer programming on mathematics and reading achievement found these programs often had significant, positive benefits that were often more pronounced in low ‐ income areas (Kim and Quinn 2013; Lynch et al. 2022; McCombs et al. 2019).”