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The accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 place high-poverty schools and racially diverse schools at a disadvantage because they rely on mean proficiency scores and require all subgroups to meet the same goals for accountability. In this article, student achievement data from six states are used to highlight differences in the demographic characteristics of schools identified as needing improvement and schools meeting the federal adequate yearly progress requirements. School-level data from Virginia and California are used to illustrate that these differences arise both from the selection bias inherent in using mean proficiency scores and from rules that require students in racially diverse schools to meet multiple performance targets. The authors suggest alternatives for the design of accountability systems that include using multiple measures of student achievement, factoring in student improvement on achievement tests in reading and mathematics, and incorporating state accountability ratings of school performance.

The effects of a voluntary summer reading intervention were assessed in a randomized field trial involving 552 students in 10 schools. In this study, fourth-grade children received eight books to read during their summer vacation and were encouraged by their teachers to practice oral reading at home with a family member and to use comprehension strategies during independent, silent reading. Reading lessons occurred during the last month of school in June, and eight books were mailed to students biweekly during July and August. The estimated treatment effects on a standardized test of reading achievement (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) were largest for Black students (ES = .22), Latino students (ES = .14), less fluent readers (ES = .17), and students who reported owning fewer than 50 children’s books (ES = .13). The main findings suggest that a voluntary summer reading intervention may represent a scalable policy for improving reading achievement among lower performing students.

This study examined the efficacy of a supplemental, multicomponent adolescent reading intervention for middle school students who scored below proficient on a state literacy assessment. Using a within-school experimental design, we randomly assigned 483 students in grades 6 to 8 to a business-as-usual control condition or to the Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI), a supplemental reading program involving instruction to support word reading skills, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, and peer talk to promote reading engagement and comprehension. We assessed behavioral engagement by measuring how much of the STARI curriculum activities students completed during an academic school year and we collected intervention teachers' ratings of their students' reading engagement. STARI students outperformed control students on measures of word recognition (d = .20), efficiency of basic reading comprehension (d = .21), and morphological awareness (d = .18). Reading engagement in its behavioral form, as measured by students' participation and involvement in the STARI curriculum, mediated the treatment effects on each of these three posttest outcomes. Intervention teachers' ratings of their students' emotional and cognitive engagement explained unique variance on reading posttests. Findings from this study support the hypothesis that (a) behavioral engagement fosters struggling adolescents' reading growth and (b) teachers' perceptions of their students' emotional and cognitive engagement further contribute to reading competence.Keywords: adolescent literacy, reading intervention, reading engagement, experimental design, ENGAGING ADOLESCENT READERS 3Engaging Struggling Adolescent Readers to Improve Reading SkillsThe roughly one-quarter of U.S. eighth graders who score below basic on national assessments of reading (NCES, 2015) struggle with the reading demands of secondary school.They are challenged by expectations that they summarize textbook passages, use context to determine word meaning, and make text-based inferences. For many adolescents with reading difficulties, gaps in decoding and fluency compromise basic comprehension (Catts, Compton, Tomblin, & Bridges, 2012;Schatschneider, Fletcher, Francis, Carlson, & Foorman, 2004;Verhoeven & van Leeuwe, 2008). As a consequence, adolescent reading interventions often target word-and sentence-level skills in addition to skills related to meaning construction.Despite calls for increased attention to the needs of struggling adolescent readers (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004; Kamil et al., 2008), however, the impacts of existing multicomponent interventions have often been modest, especially when moved to scale in low performing schools and with teacher, rather than researcher, implementation (Edmonds et al., 2009;Scammacca et al., 2007;Solis, Miciak, Vaughn, & Fletcher, 2014;Wanzek et al., 2013).Student motivation and engagement are frequently cited as barriers to the success of adolescent literacy interventions (Kamil et al., 2008;Manset-Williamson & Nelson, 20...

The causal effects of a voluntary summer reading intervention on children's reading activities and reading achievement were assessed in a randomized experiment involving 331 children in Grades 1-5. Children were pretested in the spring on a standardized test of reading achievement (Stanford Achievement Test, 10th ed.), on the Elementary Reading Attitudes Survey, and on a reading preference survey. At the end of the school year, children were stratified by their grade level and classroom and were randomly assigned to receive 10 books matched to their reading levels and preferences during summer vacation or after the administration of posttests. Children in the treatment group received books through airmail in July and August. In September, children were readministered the reading test and completed a survey of their summer reading activities. Although the treatment group reported reading more books and participating in more literacy activities than did the control group, there was no significant difference in reading achievement. Recommendations for enhancing the effects of voluntary reading through teacher-directed instruction and for conducting a replication study are discussed.