ACCESS TO PRINT IS ESSENTIAL TO SUCCESS IN SCHOOL AND BEYOND
• The likelihood of being on track in literacy and numeracy “almost doubled if at least one book was available in a student’s home” (Manu et al., 2019, p. 1).
• Books read in adolescence have a direct correlation to adult literacy, numeracy, and technology skills (Sikora, 2018). • Children expand their vocabularies by reading extensively on their own. The more children read, the more their vocabularies grow (Allington, 2006; Armbruster et al., 2001; Kuhn et al., 2006).
• Children learn an average of 4,000 to 12,000 new words each year through reading books (Anderson & Nagy, 1992).
• Reading more often improves technical reading, oral language, spelling skills, and reading comprehension (Mol & Bus, 2011).
THE SUMMER SLIDE By age 18, the average student in the United States will spend only 13% of his or her waking time in school (Wherry, 2004). That figure reflects weekends, school holidays, and—most of all—summer breaks. In most school districts, summer break lasts nearly three months—the length of one-third of the academic year. Taking a three-month break from the learning of any skill at any age would be detrimental to the success of learners, and several analyses conclude that, on average, students’ achievement scores decline over summer vacation by the equivalent of one month of learning. The extent of learning loss is understandably larger at higher grade levels (Cooper et al., 1996; McEachin & Atteberry, 2016; Atteberry & McEachin 2021). • Reading volume is highly predictive of declarative knowledge , and print exposure is more predictive than cognitive ability for developing a store of declarative knowledge (Sparks et al., 2014). • A book-oriented home environment provides students with a wide array of academic skills, including “ vocabulary, information, comprehension skills, imagination, broad horizons of history and geography, familiarity with good writing, understanding of the importance of evidence in an argument , and many others” (Evans et al., 2010, p. 189).
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