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Hmm, my husband grew up in the same foster home his entire childhood. His parents were from rural East Texas during the turn of the century, and had been educated in segregated schools. His mother was functionally illiterate. She had, however, worked as a governess/nanny in the homes of upper-middle-class Jewish families in Texas, where the homes had libraries, and shelves full of books.
Their home had a very strange and motely collection of books that had obviously been bought by the "yard" at a second-hand store (old sociology texts, etc.) My husband was taught to read at age four by an older foster sister, and from sitting on his dad's lap as he read the sports section. He used to read those strange old books for "entertainment" (in addition to running around with friends and other pursuits). My husband went on to college (with assistance from a program run by the NAACP to help kids sign up for school), and eventually attended one of the best law schools in the country. His sister did her undergrad at UC Berkeley, and got a BS in Nursing. His foster brother went to the physician's assistant program at Stanford. Other foster children from that home went on to work in the insurance industry, 3com, etc.
I think it was both a combination of the social mobility of the time, support programs, and the value that home put on education that helped. I don't know that the like could be replicated today as foster children tend not to be in those sorts of long term placements, and the kids have a lot more that has gone wrong before they are placed in state care. Also, programs to encourage and assist minority students apply to college are not as plentiful. It's like doing a study on what works in a classroom, you'd be hard-pressed to separate out the "causal" from the "co-relational"

Claus,

A key element, I think, is also who chooses the books. In the project at our school, students choose from among the hundreds that are give every month by our local Friends of the Library. The Friends also specifically look for the authors our students have identified as their favorites.

As in anything, if people feel a sense of power and ownership, they are going to be more invested in it. The book giveaway days in my classroom are some of the times I see my students most excited. For many, it's the first time they can have their own "home library."

One of the studies you cite (I think it's the one in Florida) also specifically gave students books they requested.

Larry

Alice--Thanks for relating your husband's experience. it sounds like the availability of books, his foster parents' commitment to education, programs geared to encouraging students of color, and his own inner resources all worked in concert to get him on the right trajectory. So it's tough to isolate the effects of a single factor, as usual. Still, the research on the positive effects of simply giving students books seems interesting enough to warrant more attention. (It will be interesting to read the most recent study as soon as it becomes available....)

Larry--You make a good point. I had meant to mention the fact that the subjects of the most recent study had in fact been able to choose the books they wanted to read. That may well have helped.  My hope is always that those books can serve as a gateway to other books they may not choose on their own, at least not in the first go around....

This presents a compelling argument for schools to no longer buy books ... of any kind.

Let's start putting Ipads (or any competing device) in the hands of every kid - and watch the access to information gulf between rich and poor students evaporate.

Sure, there are lots of technical issues to consider - which all have technical solutions.

Jason Glass
Eagle, CO

What bothered me when I read about the Florida study is how superficiall these results could be read and replicated. $50 vouchers for the Twilight series in lieu reading comprehension instruction articulated k-12.

I also gotta say, an iPad in every pot as the solution to student motivation is not scaleable or sustainable (equitably, environmentally). Check out this recent New Yorker article--it really got me thinking about answering every problem with "technology."

The "Ipad for every kid" solution is already at the tipping point. Its now cheaper to buy kids Ipads than to provide them with regular textbooks, access to desktop computer labs, and tech teachers.

Before someone goes crazy about the "tech teachers" comment, let me say three things: 1) kids today are "digital natives" and have much less need of these kinds of teachers 2) these teachers can be retrained and assigned to teach something else and 3) the adults in the system are much, much less my concern.

Students should not have to go back in time as soon as they enter schools. Ipads and Kindles can do everything books can do, and obviously a lot more in the case of the Ipad.

Depriving a kid access to technology when in school for the sake of "sustained focus" will not help the kid when they leave school and enter the technology rich world I call "not-school."

Instead of being education's John Henry, we should find ways to integrate cutting edge technology and teach kids appropriate and meaningful ways to use it in through their course of study.

The people uncomfortable with the idea of leaving books aside are the adults.

The kids already have...

The most compelling reason for keeping books around is nostalgia, which does nothing to improve the future of the students.

lv--I agree that the Florida study was superficial insofar as people saw handing out books as a way of replacing summer school or thoughtful instruction. As with all such things, we should keep thinking about both...and solutions.

Jason--I don't have a problem with iPads and other new technologies per se. When I mention books, I mean books that can be read on paper, on an iPad, on a Kindle, or on any new technology I can't even conceive of yet.

But I'm not sure that an iPad on its own--without any sort of adult guidance attached to it--will necessarily raise students' reading ability over the long run.

Students are certainly digital natives, and it is a bad idea to banish all the technologies they'll use at the schoolhouse door. But they're also immigrants in the world of literature, science, history, mathematics,etc. So it seems to me that the adults have the job of helping children unlock the potential of iPads and other promising technologies to become naturalized in that new, exciting territory. Left to their own devices, kids are very likely to get distracted by the internet rather than use it to best effect.

I'd be happy if students read good old fashioned books--Geoffrey Chaucer, Toni Morrison, George Eliot, etc--from beginning to end on an iPad or other device. That takes focus and concentration. Adults will have to shape the conditions under which this occurs.

Funny Jason should think of IPads as the answer (though I agree that they have great potential as text book replacements...) -- when I saw the study on the correlation between "number of books in the home" and student achievement, one of my questions was whether the growing tendency of adults to read books on Kindle's or IPads would change this.

My husband is an almost non-stop reader, and as a result we have hundreds (probably well over a thousand) books in the house -- overflowing bookshelves, sitting on side tables, stacked by the side of the bed. It's easy for our daughter to browse, they're their to talk about, and to pull out if something relevant comes up in conversation.

But since getting an IPad, more and more of the books we're buying are e-books... And I wonder if home library of e-books will have the same influence on a child as a home library of books that can be pulled off a shelf.

You could count on the fact that children are curious by nature, but that doesn't mean they will continue reading after they've figured out what those "things" do. I know homes in which there are a lot of books and the kids aren't attracted to study them at all.