Summer slide and the reading skills gap

Research shows that regardless of family income, students progress in their learning at the same rate during the school year. However, summer vacations create an average reading skills gap of about three months between students who live in economically advantaged families and those that don’t. This gap accumulates every year, and students from lower-income families can often be two or three years behind their more-advantaged peers by the time they go into middle school.

Luckily, providing students with easy access to books they choose for summer reading, over multiple years, limits summer reading loss. These students will more often engage in voluntary summer reading and will have higher reading achievement; the greatest gains come from students whose families are the most economically disadvantaged.

Page Ahead’s programs are designed to close that gap before it happens—we focus on reaching children furthest from educational opportunity in the earliest stages in their development. Based on a highly regarded 2010 Department of Education–funded study, our Book Up Summer program gives students in grades K–2 at majority low-income elementary schools reading material for summer vacation—at no cost to them or their families. 

Instead of a summer setback, Book Up Summer students experience a boost! According to 2018 Seattle Public Schools testing data, Book Up Summer students show an average improvement in reading skills of 2.63 points over the summer for rising first graders and 1.84 points over the summer for rising second graders.

To see these students, who would typically slide back, actually gaining reading skill is a powerful endorsement of this summer-reading model.

Learn more about Book Up Summer here.