Schools and districts are adopting out-of-school-time (OST) programs such as after-school programs and summer schools to supplement the education of low-achieving students. However, research has painted a mixed picture of their effectiveness. To clarify OST impacts, this synthesis examined research on OST programs for assisting at-risk students in reading and/or mathematics. Researchers analyzed 35 OST studies that employed control or comparison groups and met other inclusion criteria. Meta-analyses indicated small but statistically significant positive effects of OST on both reading and mathematics student achievement and larger positive effect sizes for programs with specific characteristics such as tutoring in reading. Whether the OST program took place after school or during the summer did not make a difference in effectiveness.

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This study examined whether adult speech production and oral reading were related independent of auditory short-term memory and vocabulary. Forty-four university students served as subjects for the study. They ranged in age from 17 to 28 years old; 26 were men and 18 were women; 11 were students with learning disabilities and 33 were students without disabilities. All subjects were tested individually on tasks requiring multisyllabic pseudoword repetition, oral reading, memory for digits, and vocabulary. In both groups--with and without learning disabilities--significant correlations were found between pseudoword repetition accuracy and reading, suggesting that poor readers also have more inaccurate speech production. The correlations remained significant after controlling for both memory and vocabulary. A scatter plot of the speech-reading relationship showed performance overlap between groups, as well as within-group heterogeneity. Significance of the findings is discussed, and issues for future research are identified.