THE SUMMER SLIDE—OR READING LEAP!
“Access to books together with family engagement and teacher support enables all students to avoid the summer
slide and, instead, make a summer leap!” —Dr. Ernest Morrel, Teachers College, Columbia University
KEY FINDINGS
> > As McGill-Franzen (2016) notes, “Free self-selected books can improve student reading performance and stop summer reading loss.” Indeed, access to books all summer long can even create a summer reading leap (Morrell, 2016). > > The “summer slide” or “summer reading setback” is a simple reality for millions of low-income children, often with devastating results. It means that every summer, when school closes and these students no longer have access to books, they lose ground as readers. > > The decline is especially dramatic for students who are the most economically deprived (Allington and McGill-Franzen, 2013). The less economic support the students have, the graver the consequences of the summer slide (McGill-Franzen, 2016; Shin and Krashen, 2008). > > Two-thirds of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth can be explained by unequal access to books (Alexander et al., 2007). At best, students showed little or no academic growth over summer. At worst, students lost one to three months of learning (Cooper et al., 2000; Kim, 2009). > > In addition, because the summer learning shortfall is cumulative (every summer, lower-income students slip further behind), it has consequences that reverberate throughout children’s schooling and can affect whether a child ultimately earns a high school diploma and continues on to college (Alexander et al., 2007). > > Book distribution programs reveal the following (McGill-Franzen, 2016): • Book ownership is more powerful than book lending programs. • Providing parents with guidance demonstrates a high return on the investment. • Providing teachers with professional development on how to most effectively use trade books offers a robust return on investment. • Inviting student choice seems to increase the positive effects of book distribution, particularly on early reading skills (McGill-Franzen, 2016).
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CHAPTER 4: TEXT
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