Closing the Literacy Gap in Philadelphia

Abstract

A young Teach for America teacher is handed the end-of-the-school-year reading achievement data for his incoming first grade class from their kindergarten year. He then spends the first 83 teaching days of the current year getting his class back to those reading levels. It is not until November 28th that his students finally catch up to where they had been the previous June.

Reading loss over the summer, called summer learning loss, is the sad reality for many children from households that are neither computer- nor book-rich, nor inhabited by habitual readers. Research finds that two-thirds of the achievement gap in high school is attributable to summer learning loss in the elementary school years. The teacher introduced above, Alejandro Gac-Artigas, decided to create a program that both prevented summer learning loss and advanced his students’ reading levels. He called it Springboard Collaborative.

Springboard combines student reading instruction with parent training to close the literacy gap for low-income students in Philadelphia. By training parents and teachers to share the role of educator, Springboard nearly doubles students’ annual reading progress. It creates these gains in one-third the time and for one-fifth the cost of school year instruction. These results put K-3rd graders on a path to close the reading achievement gap by 4th grade.