Does a summer reading program based on Lexiles affect reading comprehension?

This report presents estimates from a large-scale, multi-district RCT on the effectiveness of a summer reading program on improving student reading comprehension for economically disadvantaged grade 3 students reading below the 50th percentile nationally.Students had to meet three criteria to be eligible for the study: (1) be enrolled in the FRPL program (to identify economically disadvantaged students); (2) have a Lexile measure (provided as part of the Texas assessment program) at or below 590L on the spring 2009 grade 3 English language reading assessment, which represents the 50th percentile for grade 3 on national norms linked to the Lexile scale (Scholastic, Inc. 2007); and (3) be physically and mentally able to read independently (as determined by their teachers) since students were not going to receive support during the summer. The confirmatory analysis found that the summer reading program did not have a statistically significant impact on student reading comprehension. Se...