WASHINGTON, D.C., August 7, 2006—A well-implemented summer program for low-income children and families can be successful at increasing reading skills and parental involvement, according to a new Urban Institute report.

Research has shown that low-income children may experience declines in academic progress while school is out. While public funding has increased to combat this brain drain, there is limited research on how effective summer enrichment programs are.

In their new study, former Urban Institute researchers Duncan Chaplin and Jeffrey Capizzano offer strong evidence of the effectiveness of the Building Educated Leaders for Life program, or BELL, a summer program designed to improve academic skills, parental involvement, and social behaviors among low-income children and families.

Unlike many previous studies of out-of-school programs, Chaplin and Capizzano were able to use random assignment of subjects, making the results far more credible than most evaluations, which generally rely on less rigorous evaluation methods.

Key findings:

• Children in the treatment group designated to receive the six-week program improved their reading skills by about a month more than the other children in the study.
• The program also showed positive effects on hours of academic activities, books read, and the degree to which parents encouraged children to read.
• The results suggest that BELL appears to be about as cost-effective as regular public school instruction for improving reading skills.

"These findings provide some support for investments in out-of-school time programming for low-income children during the summer, such as those currently coming from the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program and the Supplemental Services provisions of Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act," note Chaplin and Capizzano.

The report, by Duncan Chaplin, now at Mathematica Policy Research, and Jeffrey Capizzano, now at Teaching Strategies Inc., is available at http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411350. The study was made possible by funding from the William T. Grant Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

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