1

Marissa Guzman
LIS708
Service Evaluation Analysis

Evaluating Summer Reading Programs

Summer reading programs are offered every year at most libraries. These programs are

offered in order to help kids stay on track and not lose any skills over the summer months when

school is out of session. “When school is out, the resource faucet is off and low-income children

do not have access to learning resources” (Matthews, 2018). Some people may wonder why this

is the case for low-income children. According to White et al. (2014), “Relative to students from

middle-income families, those from low-income families may have fewer material resources

(e.g. books) or psychological resources (e.g., family support for literacy) in the home or may

have fewer material or psychological resources in the community in which they live” (p. 6). This

paper will explore how summer reading programs are benefiting children of all ages, but

especially those in low-income areas and why they are essential to keep having throughout the

summer months.

Identify the Problem

I think it is no secret that children lose some skills over the summer months when they

are entirely focused on “summer mode.” Plenty of research has shown that children lose some

skills during the summer and unfortunately, this is seen more within children who are low-

income or live in areas where they do not easily have access to technology/resources. If children

continue to go summer after summer without any extra help or reading program, students will

continue to be behind in school and will never fully “catch-up.” Over time, this could affect

future generations because they will pass on the knowledge that they have and also will continue
 2

to not put their future children into summer reading programs or other programs that may help to

eliminate that reading gap loss.

To understand how effective summer reading programs are for all children, three research

questions should be asked: Are parents satisfied with the results from the summer reading

program? Has the use of the summer reading program improved children's reading scores? How

effective are the prizes for each reading level?

Literature Review

Help to Reduce Setback

According to Lara-Cinisomo et al., (2020), “During summer, student learning decreases

or does not improve for many students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds as well as

racial and ethnic minorities, particularly males, and this loss has cumulative negative effects over

time and generations” (p. 211). Some students were on the boarder of being held back in reading

instead of moving onto the next grade level, after the summer reading program ended and they

returned back to school, the student’s tests scores had improved significantly (Johnston et al.,

2015). One main problem that is seen with summer reading programs is that they cost a lot of

money to get started and to have them run for a specific time during the summer. A study

indicated that the cost of having a summer reading program run actually cost schools less money

than needing the school to pay for an entire year of students who would need to repeat a grade

level (Reed et al., 2020). This is a significant amount of money that could be saved over many

years if more students go to summer reading programs for additional help or just to stay on top of

their reading skills. This is one way to help prevent students from falling behind and staying on

track with their studies.

Parents and Kids Feedback

 3

Parents and teachers were both impressed and satisfied with how the summer reading

programs have helped the children stay caught up or get ahead in reading. Parents felt like the

prizes that the kids won really encouraged them to keep reading and keep going through the

program (Becnel et al., 2017). The kids seemed to dread the summer reading program at the

beginning of the summer and after the program ended, the kids could not keep the books down.

Some families found their selves going to visit other family members and the topic of reading

came up to the point that the entire family found their selves at the local bookstore getting more

books for their homes (Compton et al., 2016).

Achievements Beyond Reading

Although parents put their children into summer reading programs in order to improve

and keep up on their reading skills, there were other aspects that children gained as well. Some

of those things were more confidence when reading and completing their homework along with a

readiness to learn new information (Bogel, 2012). All of these achievements are great for not

only the children but also everyone around them. Another main achievement that was mentioned

was how comfortable children got with going to the library through the course of the summer

reading program and even after the program ended (Dynia et al., 2015). The best achievement

that I came across was hearing how low-income families were less likely to spend time around

books before having their kids take part in the program like reading with their kids, going to the

library, etc. However, this changed after the course of the summer reading program when parents

started to see how excited their kids got when it came to them reading books (White et al., 2014).

This caused for the parents to want to be involved in their children reading books, so it was a win

for the whole family.

Determining the Scope of the Process & Key Stakeholders

 4

The Midlothian Public Library serves the suburb of Midlothian, Illinois with an estimated

population to be 13,983 (United States Census Bureau, 2021). According to the US Census

Bureau, as of July 1, 2021, with 77% reporting as Caucasian. One can also see from the US

Census Bureau that 92% of households reported to have a computer and 83% of households

reported to have a broadband Internet subscription.

The mission of the Midlothian Library is to “Promote the power of knowledge and

provide the community access to information for the fulfillment of its educational, cultural,

professional, and personal interests” (Midlothian Public Library, 2022). The library showcases

their mission statement through their strategic plan. The Midlothian Library focuses on five

components that help to tie their mission and strategic plan together. Those five components are:

Provide, Invest, Welcome, Market, and Collaborate.

Let’s take a closer look into each one of these five components. Provide is used for the

library to survey the community to see what the community interests are. This allows the library

to come together to decide what the library needs in order to provide them access to information

needed. Invest is looking into technology. This is where the library is trying to keep up to date

with the newest technology in order to provide the public with the best internet and technology

possible. Welcome is reassuring the community that everyone is welcomed within the library.

The library focuses on having resources and services be available to everyone. This is also where

the library focuses on inclusion, diversity, and equity. Market is when the library makes sure

they are present within the community, pushes their brand, and expands the digital and print

collection. Collaborate is when the library partners with other community organizations to

showcase other events, resources, and use the library space as needed. All five of these
 5

components are important to the community to show how schools, the library, organizations,

local shops, and more work together in order to ensure the community is one.

Internal stakeholders for the summer reading program would be the patrons that attend the

library, participants in the summer reading programs, librarians that create and run the summer

reading programs, the library director, any librarians or volunteers that distribute prizes to the

patrons for participating in the programs, library staff who are providing reference service,

circulation staff checking in/out the materials for the program, marketing staff who promote the

programs on the library website or social media. The external stakeholders are the children,

parents, and community members that are involved within the summer reading program, also any

local schools that may do partnerships or collaborations with the library—this would also include

any school staff that help out with the summer reading programs.

Summative Evaluation Analysis

The following are four different approaches to evaluating how summer reading programs not

only help students, but also the library.

Library-Centric: 

Library-centric will be looked at by the summer reading program that the library is

offering to the patrons. The internal benchmarks that would be accessed are the number of books

being checked out/read, the number of participants in the program, and the number of

participants compared to the previous year that the program was ran.

Customer-Centric: 
 6

The customer’s needs are met by the test scores that their children get when entering into

the next school year. Participants within the study, have increased their reading scores over the

course of the summer reading program. Some of them have even started the new school year in a

higher percentile rank than they were in the previous school year (Johnston et al., 2015). Summer

reading programs are beneficial to the patron’s because the programs are helping their children

improve their reading scores and either stay on track or get ahead in reading. This also is an

important aspect to mention in this area because technology and the Internet connection must be

strong and always ready to work. Many people may come into the library because they do not

have access to Internet, so the library also has to make sure that the Internet is up to date and

ready to be used by multiple users if necessary.

Outcomes-Based: 

The outcomes-based evaluation will help to see how many of the libraries' users are

currently using the summer reading programs. Information on how well the summer reading

program is doing could also be calculated and looked at in this section. The summer reading

programs could also be looked at to see how effective they are and how the community is liking

the program so far. This could be measured with a survey before and after the program has

started and finished to see how parent’s viewpoints may have changed over the course of the

program.  

Manager Determined: 

When using this kind of evaluation, the managers can access if there are any complaints

or good reviews that the program has. Good reviews can be looked at and tweaked to make them
 7

even better. The comments on the good reviews can also be looked at to make sure the program

continues to do. If there are any complaints, the manager or the library board can look through

the complaints to see where they can try to fix the issue. This could be done by looking over the

program and changes some things around to make it run as smoothly as possible.

Applying Orr’s Model

Resources:

The components that make a summer reading program possible has a lot of raw materials

that are tied up together. One type of resource are the people. This includes the parents and

children that go to the service/utilize the service. This also includes the library staff that work

together in order to make the service possible. This includes but is not limited to any staff

that worked in creating the program, the staff that helped bring the service to life, the staff

that work the service and work directly with the kids/parents, the staff that market the event

on social media, around the town and within the library, and also the IT department that fixes

the technology used to get the information about the service out to the public.

Capability: 

As this process is taking place, we should start to see a difference with how students are

interacting with reading. We should hopefully be able to see more confidence, more pride in

reading and overall comfort when it comes to being at the library. We could also develop

surveys to go out to the parents who have children participating within the service to see how

their opinions and feelings are as the service is taking place. Efficiency or potential problems

could arise if children need more one on one help from library staff. Potential problems could
 8

also arise if there is no help or motivation from home to encourage children to keep

participating within the service/library program.

Utilization: 

With this service being used, we would see the resources, as well as the library space be

utilized more by the community. The library would have higher stats on the resources being

checked out along with higher stats on participants using their services. The library would

also get more people coming into the library from surrounding communities to check out the

library and see what they have to offer to the community.

Impact/Effect:

The larger impact on the community provided by this service will seeing children

continue to have literacy skills during the summer months. Children will be sharpening and

staying up to date on their reading skills. This also gives the participants a chance to meeting

new friends and building the beginning stages of becoming a frequent patron of the library.

We would also see more children staying current in school and not so many children falling

behind and having to repeat school years.

Defining Methods and Data

Existing Data

Some of the existing data that would already exist is all of the data collected from

previous studies that have been done over the years. This data could include how well

summer reading programs help students stay on track or ahead when it comes time for the
 9

next school year to roll around. Another aspect that could be used for existing data are the

current test scores or reading scores from students who have not participated in a summer

reading program. Their test/reading scores could be looked at before they leave for summer

break and then their test/reading scores could be looked at again when they start the next

school year. This data could be looked at to see how much skills they have lost or which

skills did not entirely stick with them during the summer months.

Qualitative Methods

“Two qualitative methods have been used to assess the effectiveness of summer reading

programs: journaling and the use of surveys” (Matthews, 2018, p. 265). Surveys could be

asked to the children, parents, or the teachers. These surveys could include questions from

their perception about their reading skills, why they read, if they feel more confident in

reading then before the summer reading program, and so on. Journaling could be used to

have the children write down the minutes and the days in which they have read. This data

could then be looked at and examined to see how often and how long they read for.

Quantitative Methods

Quantitative methods are more commonly used to date to gather the data on summer

reading programs because the data paints a clear picture for all involved (Matthews, 2018).

One rather they can get started on their research is by gathering the necessary tools needed

for the data to be collected and for the program to run. A handful of information can be

collected depending on what the library is trying to find data on. For instance, they can

collect data on the number of participants attending program events, number of books the
 10

participants read and more. As well as surveys, pre and posttests, statistical analysis can be

conducted and be broken down into much more detail.

How Do We Know?

Customer-centric, outcome-based, and manager determined would all be beneficial to

evaluating the summer reading program. These evaluations would tie into the following two

research questions: Are parents satisfied with the results from the Summer Reading Program?

Has the use of the summer reading program improved children's reading scores? Through

these two research questions we are able to identify and say that the parents were satisfied

with the results from the local summer reading program. According to Gayle Bogel (2012),

“Teachers found that students who participated in the program started the school year ready

to learn, had improved reading achievement and displayed stronger motivation, enjoyment,

and confidence in reading. Parents of students who participated in the program also strongly

agreed that their children were better prepared to begin the school year” (p. 103). With this

data it is clear that the summer reading program improved the children’s reading scores. The

data also proves that not only were parents satisfied with the results from the summer reading

program, but also the teachers were also impressed.

For the last research question, I believe that it could be evaluated through customer-

centric, library-centric, and also outcome-based evaluations. These evaluations would tie into the

final research question of: How effective are the prizes for each reading level? We can see this

being effective in Charlotte, North Caroline at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (CML). “CML

allows a combination of reading time and learning activities to count toward completion of their

SRP, for which participants are rewarded with a book and fine waivers. Participants are also
 11

eligible to win “grand prizes,” which are tickets to community events and local attractions”

(Bencel et al., 2017, p. 5).

Another bonus that was found as a ‘prize’ for completing the summer reading programs

was that after completing summer reading programs, a few students found their self, browsing

for more unique ways to get books. Some children visited family overseas and found books

written in different languages so that they could bring back home with them. Other children

found new books at their local libraries, book fairs or even through the summer reading program.

(Compton et al., 2016).

Now, let’s change our focus to which methods and data collection would be best to

evaluate our three research questions. For the question, How effective are the prizes for each

reading level? I think the best method to use for this question would be a qualitative method. The

library staff could set up a survey at the beginning of the program. This way children are able to

answer for their self and pick exactly what they would want to be rewarded with. This survey

could even be handed out right before the child earns their reward. This would allow the child to

pick a different prize each time they won just in case they decided to change their mind. For the

next research question, Are parents satisfied with the results from the Summer Reading

Program? I think the best approach would be a qualitative survey. This way parents could answer

the questions about how satisfied or not satisfied they were with the program. For the final

research question, Has the use of the summer reading program improved children's reading

scores? I think that a quantitative approach could be taken to gather information on this question.

Pre- and posttest could be collected to evaluate the children’s test scores and to see how much

they improved or where they need some extra help.

 12

Conclusion

Summer reading programs are beneficial to all of those involved from the library to the

children and parents who take part in the programs to the school districts and teachers who see

the children every day. Lots of information has been gathered to see how effective summer

reading programs are. Of course, the information that has been studied also shows room for

improvement with future research. “A future endeavor for research should be to target the groups

of children who are not utilizing the SRC programming” (Dynia et al., 2015, p. 402). In the

future, research can be conducted with children who choose to not to participate in summer

reading programs. Summer reading programs continue to be helpful and a priority in libraries

each summer.
 13

References

Becnel, K. Moeller, R. A., & Matzen, N. J. (2017). Somebody signed me up: North Carolina
fourth-graders’ perceptions of summer reading programs. Children & Libraries, 15(3), 3–
8.

Bogel, G. (2012). Public library summer reading programs contribute to reading progress and
proficiency. A Review of: Roman, S., & Fiore, C. (2010). Do public library summer
reading programs close the achievement gap? Children and Libraries, (Winter), 27-31.
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 7(1), 102–104.

Compton, L., Caloia, R., Quast, E., & McCann, K. (2016). A closer look at a summer reading
program: Listening to students and parents. The Reading Teacher, 70(1), 59–67.
https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1468
Dynia, J. M., Piasta, S. B., Justice, L. M., & Library, C. M. (2015). Impact of library-based
summer reading clubs on primary-grade children’s literacy activities and achievement.
Library Activities and Achievement. Library Quarterly, 85(4), 386-405.
http://doi.org/10.1086/682733
Johnston, J., Riley, J., Ryan, C., & Kelly-Vance, L. (2015). Evaluation of a summer reading
program to reduce summer setback. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 31(4), 334–350.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10573569.2013.857978

Lara-Cinisomo, S., Taylor, D. B., & Medina, A. L. (2020). Summer reading program with
benefits for at-risk children: Results from a freedom school program. Reading & Writing
Quarterly, 36(3), 211–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/10573569.2019.1627968

Matthews, J. R. (2018). Evaluation of summer reading programs. In The Evaluation and

Measurement of Library Services (2nd ed., pp. 262-274). Libraries Unlimited.

Midlothian Public Library. (2022). Mission & strategic plan- Midlothian Public Library.
https://www.midlothianlibrary.org/about-us/library-board/mission-strategic-plan#catalog

Reed, D. K., Cook, K. M., & Aloe, A. M. (2020). A cost–benefit analysis of summer reading
programs implemented under state guidelines. Educational Policy (Los Altos, Calif.),
34(4), 594–618. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904818802112

United States Census Bureau. (2021, July 1). Quick facts: Midlothian, Illinois.
hhtps://www.census.gov/quickfacts/midlothianvillageillinois
 14

White, T. G., Kim, J. S., Kingston, H. C., & Foster, L. (2014). Replicating the effects of a
teacher-scaffolded voluntary summer reading program: The role of poverty. Reading
Research Quarterly, 49(1), 5–30. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.62