Person:

Quinn, David

This meta-analysis reviewed research on summer reading interventions conducted in the United States and Canada from 1998 to 2011. The synthesis included 41 classroom- and home-based summer reading interventions, involving children from kindergarten to Grade 8. Compared to control group children, children who participated in classroom interventions, involving teacher-directed literacy lessons, or home interventions, involving child-initiated book reading activities, enjoyed significant improvement on multiple reading outcomes. The magnitude of the treatment effect was positive for summer reading interventions that employed research-based reading instruction and included a majority of low-income children. Sensitivity analyses based on within-study comparisons indicated that summer reading interventions had significantly larger benefits for children from low-income backgrounds than for children from a mix of income backgrounds. The findings highlight the potentially positive impact of classroom and home-based summer reading interventions on the reading comprehension ability of low-income children.

The questions of how to improve educational practice at scale, and what role scientific investigation can or should play in that endeavor, have been central to the enterprise of education research since its beginning (Dewey, 1929). In one approach, researchers produce evidence regarding the effects of standardized instructional procedures on student learning, and then school- and district leaders manage teachers’ faithful implementation of those procedures. In another approach, teachers are encouraged to use their expert judgment and flexibly apply research-based principles of effective instruction in order to meet students’ unique learning needs. While these contrasting frameworks have each been influential in research and practice, little empirical work exists comparing the relative effectiveness of each of these approaches in advancing outcomes of interest in varying contexts.
In the two separate studies that comprise this dissertation, I analyze data from a school-level cluster-randomized trial in which schools were randomly assigned to implement READS – a summer literacy intervention for elementary school students that includes school-based and home-based components – under a fidelity or flexibility management approach. In the first study, I investigate – and find evidence consistent with – the hypothesis that the optimal approach to educational program implementation may be a scaffolded management sequence, in which implementers first develop proficiency with a program through a fidelity phase of management, and then make program adaptations under a flexibility management phase. The second study is motivated by the growing body of theoretical and empirical work demonstrating the numerous ways in which teachers’ social capital affects school improvement efforts. In this study, I investigate the effects of management approach on outcomes related to teachers’ social capital. I find that the flexibility approach caused participants to form more intervention-related consultation ties and caused them to consult more frequently about instructional adaptation, as opposed to implementation. At the same time, the expansion of participants’ intervention-related networks under the flexibility approach may have been offset by participants’ shrinking consultation networks in instructional areas unrelated to the intervention. Both of these studies have implications for research on how school improvement initiatives are introduced and managed.

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.