More to Know: The Challenge Entwisle (1997) used a fall-to-spring assessment schedule and found that children who were more economically advantaged added 47 raw score points over a five-year period on summer vacation reading achievement tests during elementary school years, whereas children from financially strapped homes added only one point. Entwisle developed a “faucet theory” to explain the disparity. When the school faucet is turned on—that is, when schools are in session—children of every economic background benefit roughly equally, but when the school faucet is turned off, as during summer vacations, children from economically advantaged families continue to develop their reading proficiency, and economically disadvantaged children often do not. Over a number of years, the accumulated summer loss adds up to a serious achievement gap between children with means (and books) and children without. Hayes and Grether (1983) estimated that as much as 80 percent of the reading achievement gap that existed between economically advantaged and disadvantaged students at sixth grade could be attributed to the summer setback. Alexander et al. (2007) and Allington and McGill-Franzen (2010, 2013, 2016) report similar findings.
Allington and McGill-Franzen (2010) sum it up:
Each of these studies suggested that summer reading setback is a major contributor to the existing reading achievement gap between more and less economically advantaged children—reading activity is the only factor that consistently correlated to reading gains during the summer.
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SUMMER SLIDE—OR READING LEAP!
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