Fascinating comment piece in The New York Times.

It states that University of Tennessee researchers found that after three years of letting students choose 12 books to take home from school for the long summer break that their reading scores did suffer the ‘summer slide’. Apparently this slide in reading skills especially affects kids from lower income families. That kids from families with over 500 books in the home do better.

They also talk about research showing in North Carolina that the spread of home computers and internet access has seen significant drop in maths and reading scores.

Separately I’ve read about the Dolly Parton book challenge where kids are given recommended reading books and those kids do much better.

for the moment it appears the books win.

What do you think?