Lindsay Harris, assistant professor in the NIU Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations, appeared live May 31 on Chicago’s Fox-32 afternoon news program to talk about “summer slide” – and how parents can help their children to manage it.
“Books are key. In fact, the biggest predictor of whether or not a kid will experience this is whether they have access to books in their home,” said Harris, who teaches Educational Pscyhology.
“So, for kids – no matter what the income of their family is – if they have books lying around, we don’t see these effects. It’s only kids who lose contact with reading and books over the summer that tend to experience this loss.”
There is good news and bad news.
“Within a month – sometimes two months – the kids that fall behind will catch up to where they were the previous school year,” she said. “Unfortunately, they don’t catch up to the kids who never fell behind to begin with. And these effects are cumulative.”
