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3 Keys to a Successful Summer Reading Program

3 Keys to a Successful Summer Reading Program

Source:Edvocate

Two literacy leaders share how their rural, economically challenged districts tackled the summer slide and improved their students’ Lexile scores.

In Georgia, two-thirds of our students are not reading proficiently by the time they reach third grade. That sounds like a crisis—and it is—but it tracks with national averages. A large factor contributing to the crisis, both in Georgia and across the country, is the summer slide, or learning loss that occurs during the long summer break.

The summer slide doesn’t affect all students equally. In fact, middle-class students and their wealthier peers often experience no summer slide at all and may even make progress during the break, while students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds lose months or more of hard-won academic progress.

To level the playing field for all students, a statewide initiative has brought together families, schools, nonprofits, and businesses to Get Georgia Reading. As part of that effort—a comprehensive approach including improved language nutrition, access, positive learning climates, and teacher preparation—our districts, Laurens County Schools and Brooks County Schools, participated in the summer reading initiative.

Despite our relatively small, rural, and economically disadvantaged student populations, our students read enough this past summer to finish in the top 10 counties in the state. Any number of factors can help or hinder a summer reading initiative, but the ones that turned ours into smashing successes were a digital library, teacher and parent buy-in, and support from community organizations.

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