A randomized trial involving 19 elementary schools (K-5) was conducted to replicate and extend two previous experimental studies of the effects of a voluntary summer reading program that provided (a) books matched to students' reading levels and interests and (b) teacher scaffolding in the form of end-of year comprehension lessons. Matched schools were randomly assigned to implement one of two lesson types. Within schools, students were randomly assigned to a control condition or one of two treatment conditions: a basic treatment condition replicating procedures used in the previous studies or an enhanced treatment condition that added teacher calls in the summer. During summer vacation, children in the treatment conditions received two lesson books and eight books matched to their reading level and interests. Overall, there were no significant treatment effects, and treatment effects did not differ across lesson type. However, there was a significant interaction between the treatment conditions and poverty measured at the school level. The effects of the treatments were positive for high poverty schools (d = + .08 and + .11), defined as schools where 75% to 100% of the students were receiving free or reducedprice lunches (FRL). For moderate poverty schools (45%-74% FRL), the effects of the treatments were negative (d = -.11 and -.12). The results underscore the importance of looking at patterns of treatment effects across different contexts, settings, and populations. Keywords: comprehension, socioeconomic factors, research methodology, childhood Running head: EFFECTS OF A VOLUNTARY SUMMER READING PROGRAM 3Replicating the Effects of a Teacher-Scaffolded Voluntary Summer Reading Program:The Role of Poverty During the summer months, low-income elementary students lose ground in reading relative to their middle-and high-income counterparts (Alexander, Entwisle, & Olson, 2001;Burkam, Ready, Lee, & LoGerfo, 2004;Cooper, Nye, Charlton, Lindsay, & Greathouse, 1996;Heyns, 1978;Kim, 2004;Phillips & Chin, 2004). On average, summer vacation creates a 3-month gap in reading achievement between low-and middle-income children (Cooper et al., 1996). Even The key features of READS are (a) providing summer books that are matched to students' reading levels and interests, and (b) providing teacher "scaffolding" and parent support for summer reading in the form of teacher lessons at the end of the school year and materials sent to students and parents in the summer .The purpose of this study was to replicate and extend previous studies of READS. Our specific goals were to: (a) replicate, with a larger sample of schools, the positive effects of READS that were observed in two studies conducted previously in another state; and (b) extend previous studies by studying the effects of an enhanced version of READS that added teacher calls in the summer. In addition, we conducted exploratory analyses of the effects of poverty at the school level and student level and the effects of modified end-of-year lessons focusing on content...

The authors conducted a cluster‐randomized trial to examine the effectiveness of structured teacher adaptations to the implementation of an evidence‐based summer literacy program that provided students with (a) books matched to their reading level and interests and (b) teacher scaffolding for summer reading in the form of end‐of‐year comprehension lessons and materials sent to students’ homes in the summer months. In this study, 27 high‐poverty elementary schools (75–100% eligibility for free or reduced‐price lunch) were matched by prior reading achievement and poverty level and randomly assigned to one of two implementation conditions: a core treatment condition that directly replicated implementation procedures used in previous experiments, or a core treatment with structured teacher adaptations condition. In the adaptations condition, teachers were organized into grade‐level teams around a practical improvement goal and given structured opportunities to use their knowledge, experience, and local data to extend or modify program components for their students and local contexts. Students in the adaptations condition performed 0.12 standard deviation higher on a reading comprehension posttest than students in the core treatment. An implementation analysis suggests that fidelity to core program components was high in both conditions and that teachers in the adaptations condition primarily made changes that extended or modified program procedures and activities in acceptable ways. Adaptations primarily served to increase the level of family engagement and student engagement with summer books. These results suggest that structured teacher adaptations may enhance rather than diminish the effectiveness of an evidence‐based summer literacy program.

To improve the reading comprehension outcomes of children in high poverty schools, policymakers need to identify reading interventions that show promise of effectiveness at scale.This study evaluated the effectiveness of a low-cost and large-scale summer reading intervention that provided comprehension lessons at the end of the school year and stimulated home-based summer reading routines with narrative and informational books. We conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 59 elementary schools, 463 classrooms, and 6,383 second and third graders and examined outcomes on the North Carolina End-of-Grade (EOG) reading comprehension test administered nine months after the intervention, in the children's third-or fourth-grade year. We found that on this delayed outcome, the treatment had a statistically significant impact on children's reading comprehension, improving performance by .04 SD (standard deviation) overall and .05 SD in high poverty schools. We also found, in estimates from an instrumental variables analysis, that children's participation in home-based summer book reading routines improved reading comprehension. The cost-effectiveness ratio for the intervention compared favorably to existing compensatory education programs that target high poverty schools.

as recent education reform efforts in the United States have prioritized family engagement as central to school improvement plans, school districts must grapple with ways to develop home-school partnerships (Mapp & Kuttner, 2013). Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, school districts must reserve 1% of Title I funds to assist schools in carrying out activities that foster family engagement, which can include home-based reading programs that promote alignment between home and school activities. Yet, researchers have repeatedly found that the effectiveness of these efforts is contingent upon the extent to which they acknowledge and build upon the funds of knowledge within the homes of culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse families (Dudley-Marling, 2009; Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001; Janes & Kermani, 2001). Thus, understanding the ways in which families support their children's reading skills, motivation, and habits is imperative to working with families as partners in a child's education. Qualitative studies of family reading practices have been instrumental to highlighting the numerous ways in which culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse families support the development of their children's reading skills,

Book retelling has been frequently used as an indicator of children’s reading proficiency. However, how children’s performance varies across retelling narrative and expository texts and whether that has different implications for reading proficiency remains understudied. The present study examined 85 high-poverty second- and third-graders’ retelling of narrative and expository books. A parallel coding scheme was developed to evaluate children’s performance on retelling fluency, content, and language complexity. Children’s retelling performance was compared across text types and analyzed in relation to reading proficiency. Findings revealed similarities and differences in retelling across text types, with narrative retelling containing a higher proportion of content-matched T-units, whereas expository retelling contained a higher proportion of inference generation and more complex syntactic structures. Moreover, indicators of reading proficiency were found to vary across text types. Findings highlight the distinct cognitive and linguistic demands posed by reading narrative and expository texts and provide implications for effective instruction and assessment.