 Book matters: The effect of Cocky’s Reading Express on student performanceCrystal Zhan Economics of Education Review, 2023, vol. 94, issue C Abstract: The literature argues that children are more likely to succeed academically if they acquire strong reading skills and a love of reading at a young age. In this paper, I evaluate an early childhood literacy program, Cocky’s Reading Express (CRE), to understand how reading events at school and the gifts of books impact learning. Combining the CRE visit records with administrative student data, I find that CRE leads to 0.02–0.03 of a standard deviation increase in statewide English Language Arts test scores among low-income students one year after the visit and find suggestive evidence that CRE improves the math scores for subgroups of students in poverty. In particular, the CRE effect varies based on locality and access to reading materials, with a larger effect on students residing in metropolitan areas or close to public libraries. However, the positive effects on low-income students diminish over time; CRE does not show impacts on the scores of students from better-off families either. Keywords: Early childhood literacy; Human capital investment; Poverty; Nearest-neighbor matching (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:94:y:2023:i:c:s0272775723000420 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102395 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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