Summer reading camps are helping students make gains in literacy, the director of the Alabama Reading Initiative told members of the Alabama State Board of Education on Thursday.

Bonnie Short, the director of the Alabama Reading Initiative, said that students who have been attending the Alabama summer reading camps have improved their reading, and not just avoided the “summer slide.”

After kindergarten, students who attended the camps saw an average growth of 6.37%, Short said. After first grade, students who attended the camps had an average growth of 5.44%. After second grade at the camps, students grew, on average, by 4.00%, and, after third grade, students grew an average rate of 2.91% in the camps.

Just over 29,000 students attended the camps over the summer, Short said. After kindergarten, 5,677 students attended. After first grade, 8,090 students attended. After second grade, 7,752 students attended. After third grade, 7,497 students attended.

For people who research literacy, Short said, the aim of summer reading camps is to see an average growth of 0%, which would mean that students are avoiding losing progress over the summer. Short said that positive growth, as seen in the Alabama numbers, is even better.

“We don’t want to see them go down, but of course I want growth,” she said.

Short did not provide data on how students improve or lose their reading skills over the summer without these camps.

The summer reading camps are an aspect of the Alabama Literacy Act, which provides resources to schools to improve reading but could require students to repeat third grade if they are not on reading level by that point. The camps need to have at least 60 hours of literacy instruction.

The Act, first passed in 2019, was delayed

Gov. Kay Ivey told reporters after the State Board of Education meeting that she would veto further delays.

“They give me a bill to change the date, I’ll veto it,” she said.

Short said that about 75% of the children enrolled in the program attended the camps.

“That looks really suspicious because they are all the same, but, truly, that is the data,” she said.

Short said that she is expecting higher rates of attendance in future years when the stakes for students are higher.

Research on summer learning loss is mixed, according to a , but an analysis of summer math programs suggests that formal summer programs benefit students who are already struggling academically.

State Superintendent Eric Mackey said students in the camps would almost all be students with low scores in the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program (ACAP). Short said that students who are in a gray area of passing or failing by just a few points are also invited.

“We can start inviting children to the summer reading camps today based on the information we have from the earlier screener,” she said.

Tracie West, District 2 board member and vice president of the board, said that she has superintendents who have been disappointed with their turnouts. Short said that transportation is a possible reason.

Short also said that, while they need their 60 hours of summer reading, they also want to incorporate more aspects into the camps, such as softball.

“I want our summer reading camp programs to have opportunities inside them that are beyond just reading,” she said.

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In my day job as an education researcher, I know that too many kids never learn to read well. Kids who don’t learn to read fluently by 3^rd grade as the material gets more complex. 

That fact hit home this spring when I noticed my 8-year-old son had picked up a bad reading habit at school. When he came to a word he didn’t recognize, he would guess. 

Rather than sounding out the word and breaking it down into parts, he looks at the first letter or considers other context clues and then tries to guess. Sometimes he looks to me for confirmation and takes his eyes off the page. If I step in to tell him he got it wrong he’ll just try again, without even looking back down. 

As a parent, this process drives me crazy. You can’t read without looking at the words! I also know this guessing strategy is not going to serve him well as he encounters more challenging texts. 

My wife and I are working with my son to slow down, sound out unfamiliar words and use his finger to track his reading. He’s getting better. 

But these problems are not unique to my kid or his neighborhood school in suburban Virginia. Many schools continue to rely on literacy programs that encourage these practices. Meanwhile, reading scores were declining even before COVID-19 hit, and school closures only made things . 

All this led me to start a new initiative to help parents establish positive reading habits from the beginning—before bad habits have time to take root. I’m calling it . 

Read Not Guess will start with a 30-day challenge to help parents get their kids ready to start the next school year strong. It’s free and open to all, and parents who sign up will receive a daily email with a short lesson. The lessons, which run from July 18 to Aug. 19, are meant for busy families and should take only five to 10 minutes to work through. 

I designed the Read Not Guess summer learning challenge to serve parents who want to help their kids but don’t know how or who just need some extra guidance. It will combine the best of a good phonics instruction book plus friendly nudges and regular encouragement, delivered in bite-sized lessons over email. 

By the end of the challenge, children will understand that English is read left to right, be able to identify and sound out the most common phonemes (letter sounds), begin blending those sounds into words, and start reading complete sentences. Parents will gain a deeper understanding of phonics; practice talking to their child about reading; and learn tools, games and assessments to monitor their child’s reading progress going forward.

Why should parents do all this work? Can’t they just rely on the schools to teach their kids to read? It’s been hard to be a parent through the pandemic, and it might be tempting for parents to take it easy this summer. 

But with many schools still in various stages of upgrading their reading curriculum, some classrooms may still be teaching legacy programs that encourage guessing, even though the good readers can sound out difficult words. Parents do not need to shoulder the full burden, but they can play an active role in building good habits and monitoring their child’s progress. Even relatively  parent interventions can lead to big literacy gains for children, especially the most disadvantaged. — like what Read Not Guess will offer — have even more promising results. 

Summer is a time for barbecues and swimming pools. But while school is out and the kids are at home, summer also presents an opportunity for parents to step in and help their children learn to read — not guess. It’s too important to leave to chance.

This article was written and published while the author was with Edunomics Lab at McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.