Thomas G. White

Scaffolding Voluntary Summer Reading for Children in Grades 3 to 5: An Experimental Study

The effects of a voluntary summer reading intervention with teacher and parent scaffolding were investigated in an experimental study. A total of 24 teachers and 400 children in Grades 3, 4, and 5 were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: control, books only, books with oral reading scaffolding, and books with oral reading and comprehension scaffolding. Books were matched to childrens reading levels and interests. Children were pre- and posttested on measures of oral reading fluency (DIBELS) and silent reading ability (Iowa Test of Basic Skills [ITBS]). Results showed that children in the books with oral reading and comprehension scaffolding condition scored significantly higher on the ITBS posttest than children in the control condition. In addition, children in the two scaffolding conditions combined scored higher on the ITBS posttest than children in the control and books only conditions combined. Practical implications for summer voluntary reading interventions are discussed.

Solving the Problem of Summer Reading Loss.

After they start school, low-income children lose ground to middle-income kids in reading. Some hypothesize that this growing gap in reading achievement is due, in large part, to different rates of learning during the summer months. Even small differences in summer learning accumulate over the years, making the achievement gap substantially larger at the end of elementary school than at the beginning. One longitudinal study showed that more than half of the gap in 9th-grade reading comprehension scores between low-income students and their middle-income counterparts was explained by differences in summer learning that accumulated from 1st to 5th grade (Alexander, Entwisle, and Olson 2007). The phenomenon of summer reading loss is well-known to educators, but the most commonly proposed solutions are either ineffective or too costly. However, research is pointing to an alternative approach that does work and is cost-effective.

School Choice Decision Making Among Suburban, High-Income Parents

Parents’ decision making about whether to send their children to a traditional public or charter schools has been studied mostly in urban, low-income areas. Few studies have focused on the decisions of high-income, suburban families. In a sample of Core Knowledge charter schools in a predominantly White and socioeconomically advantaged set of suburbs in Denver, Colorado, we are able to examine both the closed- and open-ended responses of parents who reported the importance of various factors in the decision-making process. Similar to findings from urban, low-income areas, we find that parents rely on their social networks in choosing schools and report the importance of effective teachers, distance to school, and academic quality, which our open-ended responses reveal means different things to different parents. Contrasting previous research, we also find that high-income parents “do their research” on schools to which they are applying.