HARVARD COLLEGE, PRESIDENT & FELLOWS OF

The purpose of our I3 grant is to promote summer reading and close the achievement gap for low SES students in NC. Over five years, we will work with Communities in Schools of North Carolina to implement, validate, and scale up an innovative approach to combating summer loss among low-income children. The Project—called READS (Reading Enhances Achievement During Summer)—provides children with books during the summer and promotes summer reading with teacher and parent “scaffolding.” In implementing READS, districts must adopt a set of data use strategies that inform decision-making and help to improve student achievement, such as examining spring to fall achievement gains or losses and using the results of student surveys and achievement tests to select books that are well matched to students' reading skills and interests. The major goal of the I3 grant is to validate the READS intervention in North Carolina through a series of randomized experiments involving seven districts and as many as 10,000 students. In the final year of the project, we will use data from the experiments to scale-up the most cost-effective version of the READS program. The proposed project has three phases: Phase 1 Validation, which includes testing READS in several districts including Durham Public Schools and an effort to increase the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of the program; Phase 2 Validation, which involves expansion into more districts and many more schools and testing the cumulative impact of READS across summers; and Phase 3 Scale-Up, which involves expansion into as many as 20 more districts. In Phase 1 Validation, an independent evaluator will a) conduct two experiments that test the effects of the READS program that was implemented previously and an enhanced version of it, and b) analyze the cost effectiveness of the basic and enhanced versions of READS to identify the most cost effective version (CE READS). In phase 2 validation, the evaluator will (a) conduct an experimental test of the effects of the READS program in high poverty schools overall, and for a subgroup of students most likely to benefit in high poverty schools, and (b) compare growth over the summer and school year for students who receive READS for two summers vs. one summer. In Phase 3 Scale-Up, the non-profit partner CIS will scale up CE READS in up to 20 NC districts. High-quality implementation data will be collected in all three phases to ensure fidelity of implementation, understand how key stakeholders use data in making decisions about expansion, and understand how a non-profit organization like CIS can successfully facilitate scale-up of READS across districts. Project data will be used in the three ways to improve student achievement. First, project data will inform each version of the READS intervention. We will use data to match books to children’s reading level and interests, and we will use fidelity and performance data to develop lessons, teacher training, and family night event scripts in order to scaffold children’s summer reading through comprehension lessons at the end of the school year and over the summer. Second, project data will inform the READS evaluation. We will use data from randomized experiments to identify cost-effective innovations to core READS. We will estimate impacts on reading comprehension and generate per pupil costs of the various READS interventions. Third, project data will be used to inform district policy. We will share data from the READS evaluation studies with district stakeholders through interviews and focus groups and then use data from stakeholders to modify and enhance READS. We start by validating READS in one district, and then over three additional years of experimental trials, we systematically scale the intervention and evaluation strategy in seven districts.

Clarification of Codes