Though the “summer slide” affects students from all socioeconomic backgrounds, it disproportionately impacts students from low-income communities. A groundbreaking study by Hayes and Grether (1983) found that as much as 80% of the reading achievement gap that exists between economically advantaged and disadvantaged students in sixth grade is the result of summer learning setbacks, and many other studies have revealed similar findings. • Cooper et al. (1996) published an extensive meta-analysis revealing that, on average, summer vacation created a reading achievement gap of about three months between middle- and lower-class students . The study reported that between Grades 1–6, the cumulative impact of this gap could snowball to 1.5 years of lost reading development. • In their study of Baltimore students, Alexander et al. (2007) found that, by ninth grade, low-income students were reading at a level almost three grades behind that of middle-income students, with summer reading loss accounting for more than half of the difference in reading skills . This difference in achievement also predicted later dropouts and college attendance. Alexander et al.’s (2007) “faucet theory” explains why lower-income students might learn less over the summer than higher-income students. During the school year, all students have access to resources and gains from in-school, teacher-led learning. However, while higher-income students retain access to learning resources over the summer, their peers from disadvantaged backgrounds no longer have access to the learning “faucet.” The faucet is turned off, making it more difficult for them to keep up with their higher-income peers (Quinn & Polikoff, 2017). BOOK DESERTS The “summer slide” is exacerbated by limited access to books during out-of-school time—a reality that has a more significant impact on students from lower-income families than on their peers. Two important analyses of access to children’s books from Neuman and Celano (2001) and Neuman and Moland (2019) revealed that in low-income neighborhoods, fewer children’s books were available in stores, childcare centers, elementary schools, and public libraries than were available in middle-class communities nearby.
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