1) Books in the home correlate powerfully with student success, and, 2) young students can lose 1 ½ years of their reading achievement over the summer.
That’s why school districts across the country are partnering with non-profit programs to make sure that underprivileged students leaving school for the summer are bringing home an armful of new books.
A new 3-year study by reading researcher Richard Allington at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville shows that when these kids return to school they will have “significantly” higher reading scores and less ‘summer back-sliding’ than peers who didn’t get books. In fact, the kids who took books home not only kept up their reading skills, but actually improved them.
Cuba has promised the Roman Catholic Church it will free 52 political prisoners, slashing the number held by nearly a third in what would be the communist-led island’s largest release of dissidents since Pope John Paul II visited in 1998.
