UF Researchers: Summer Vacation A Setback For Poor School Children

June 14, 2002

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — “Summertime and the living is easy” may bring hard lessons to poor children, who often fall years behind in school by not reading during three-month summer vacation breaks, University of Florida researchers say.

With schools closed, the key is finding novel ways to get books into the hands of children during their long summer hiatus, said Richard Allington, a professor in the UF College of Education’s School of Teaching and Learning.

“Summer reading loss” or “summer setback” plagues children from low-income families, who have few books and few opportunities to read, Allington said. Their reading achievement declines an average of three months between June and September, while that of middle-class students improves or remains the same, he said.

“A summer reading loss of three months accumulates to a two-year gap by the time poor kids are in middle school, even if their schools are equally effective,” Allington said. “It suggests that focusing all of our efforts on improving the schools isn’t going to work.”

Allington, who has developed a list of ways to put books in children’s hands with UF education professor Anne McGill-Franzen, said there are many reasons for the problem.

“The best predictor of summer loss or summer gain is whether you read or not during the summer, and the best predictor of whether you read is whether or not you own books,” Allington said. “While rich kids may have bedroom libraries of a couple hundred books, poor kids rely heavily on schools for their books.”

With schools and their libraries closed for the summer, public libraries might seem like a logical solution, but those located in poor neighborhoods are the first to close or restrict hours in a budget crunch, Allington said. Even when public libraries are open, poor children may not have transportation to get there, he said.

Research shows that public library use among poor children drops off when a library is more than six blocks from their home, compared with more than two miles for middle-class children, Allington said. “While middle-class children ride their bikes to the town library, poor kids often aren’t allowed on the streets by themselves because they’re considered too dangerous,” he said.

Low-income parents may be reluctant to have their children check out books from the city library because they are charged fines if books are not returned, McGill-Franzen said.

“We also know that school teachers and librarians in the poorest communities are the least likely to allow children to check out books because they’re afraid they won’t come back,” McGill-Franzen said. “Often they have to replace the books that are lost from their own classrooms or libraries with their own money.”

One reason teachers and librarians in poorer districts are more protective is they have far fewer books than wealthier schools do, Allington said. Book clubs, for example, are basically a middle-class phenomenon, and the more books children order, the more free or “bonus” books schools receive as a reward, making it a case of the rich getting richer, he said.

“Principals in high-poverty schools use what money they have to buy test-preparation packages, while those in middle-class schools buy books,” he said.

“It just seems we’re a rich enough society that we should be able to make sure that any child who wants a book is able to read one over the summer.”

Among the ways Allington and McGill-Franzen suggest getting books to children:

· Allow students to check out school or classroom library books for the summer, limiting the number to five books initially and opening the library one evening each week so children can return them. Libraries in some wealthy schools stay open on a drop-in basis for this purpose, Allington said.

· Sponsor school book fairs where children can order 10 to 20 books from a diverse selection to be delivered on the final day of the school year. In schools with many students from low-income families, money might be allocated from the school budget or from federal funds. At one school in Gainesville, local merchants provided money to allow each child to select a single book for summer reading.

· Create a “Books for a Buck” program that recycles paperback books and makes them available to students for a dollar, or even 25 cents apiece.

· Start a paperback “honor library” modeled after those found in post offices, coffee shops and other public places in resort communities where people borrow a book and return it when they are done reading it. Wire racks that display books could be placed outside school entrances each day during the summer so children could drop by and pick up a book.

“There are simple ways to ensure that books become available to any child at any time of the year – especially in summer, when the reading should be easy,” McGill-Franzen said.