Post by title1parent on Jun 7, 2010 6:44:59 GMT -5
www.suntimes.com/news/education/2361900,CST-NWS-summer07.article
Are books just as good as summer school?
Study: Free books give low-income kids academic lift
June 7, 2010
BY GREG TOPPO
Can a $50 stack of paperbacks do as much for a child's academic fortunes as a $3,000 stint in summer school?
Researchers think so. Now, an experimental program in seven states -- including the Chicago Public Schools -- will give thousands of low-income students an armful of free books this summer.
Research has shown that giving books to kids might be as effective at keeping them learning over the summer as summer school -- and a lot cheaper. The big questions are whether the effect can be replicated on a large scale -- and whether it can help reduce the achievement gap between low-income and middle-class students.
Schools have always tried to get students to read over the summer. For middle-class students, that's not as big a deal. They usually have access to books, says Richard Allington, a reading researcher at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
Over the last 20 years, though, researchers have shown that low-income students have less access to print.
The result: a well-documented "summer slide" in academics that, by sixth grade, accounts for as much as 80 percent of the achievement gap, researchers say. They say low-income students lose about three months of ground each summer to their middle-class peers.
"You do that across 9 or 10 summers, and the next thing you know, you've got almost three years' reading growth lost," Allington says. AP
Are books just as good as summer school?
Study: Free books give low-income kids academic lift
June 7, 2010
BY GREG TOPPO
Can a $50 stack of paperbacks do as much for a child's academic fortunes as a $3,000 stint in summer school?
Researchers think so. Now, an experimental program in seven states -- including the Chicago Public Schools -- will give thousands of low-income students an armful of free books this summer.
Research has shown that giving books to kids might be as effective at keeping them learning over the summer as summer school -- and a lot cheaper. The big questions are whether the effect can be replicated on a large scale -- and whether it can help reduce the achievement gap between low-income and middle-class students.
Schools have always tried to get students to read over the summer. For middle-class students, that's not as big a deal. They usually have access to books, says Richard Allington, a reading researcher at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
Over the last 20 years, though, researchers have shown that low-income students have less access to print.
The result: a well-documented "summer slide" in academics that, by sixth grade, accounts for as much as 80 percent of the achievement gap, researchers say. They say low-income students lose about three months of ground each summer to their middle-class peers.
"You do that across 9 or 10 summers, and the next thing you know, you've got almost three years' reading growth lost," Allington says. AP