The effects of a summer reading program for migrant children in migrant schools: First-year results from a randomized ex
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The effects of a summer reading program for migrant children in migrant schools: First-year results from a randomized experiment Qian Guo1 · Young‑Suk Grace Kim2 · Yan Liu1 · Yan Peng1 · Wenkai Sun3 · Yijie Wang4 · Li Yang1 Received: 18 March 2020 / Revised: 24 October 2020 / Accepted: 5 November 2020 © Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 2020
Abstract Thanks to urbanization, some developing countries have a large migrant population. Academic performance of migrant children is usually far from satisfactory, much to the concern of educators and legislators. Meanwhile, research has attested to the importance of reading skill development by the end of third grade for later academic achievement. Against this background, we evaluated the effects of providing self-selected, developmentally appropriate books on the reading performance and summer reading amount of students in migrant schools in China, employing a randomized controlled trial. The intervention program improved rising second-graders’ word reading scores and summer reading amount. It proved particularly beneficial to low-performing children and children from disadvantaged families. The findings have implications for improving the academic achievement of migrant children in migrant schools in China and similar developing countries, especially where parental support may not be expected for the academic development of children. Keywords Summer reading program · Randomized experiment · Migrant children in migrant schools · China
Introduction The process of urbanization in developing countries tends to create a large migrant population, including many migrant children. The number of migrant children in the compulsory * Wenkai Sun [email protected] Qian Guo [email protected] Young‑Suk Grace Kim [email protected] Yan Liu [email protected] Yan Peng [email protected] Yijie Wang [email protected] Li Yang [email protected] 1
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
2
University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
3
Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
4
Shandong University, Qingdao, China
education stage (around 6–15 years old) in China was 12.77 million, 12.95 million, 13.67 million, 13.95 million, and 14.07 million from 2013 to 2017, respectively (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China 2014–2018), showing a steady upward trend. The quality of education for migrant children is generally poorer than that for local children. This problem is particularly severe in China, which has adopted a unique household registration (hukou) system to manage the population. Urban public welfare is limited to local residents with urban hukou; thus, it is difficult for migrant children to enter local public schools. In megacities in particular, migrant children’s access to public schools is severely restricted (Sun 2017). Consequently, private schools for migrant children (“migrant schools”) have mushroomed in large cities. These schools receive only small subsidies from local governments and rely mainly
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