Historically, there has been concern about students losing reading ability over extended breaks from school, commonly in the summer, but studies of this phenomenon have produced inconsistent results. We applied exploratory visual analysis of multiple datasets to examine whether students in Grades K-5 appear to lose or improve in various reading abilities over the summer and across consecutive school years. Archival data were obtained on students of different U.S. school districts who did not participate in a formal summer reading programme. Data were disaggregated by groups considered most vulnerable to summer loss: those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and those identified with disabilities. Given the variety of measure types and scores, we centred scores on each measure's cut point for proficiency in a particular grade level to depict how students' scores deviated from the proficiency classifications before and after a summer break. Overall, students' scores relative to the benchmark appeared on average to have maintained or improved, and there was no observed accumulated decrement in reading performance across years. For anomalous instances of summer loss, we offer possible alternative explanations such as measurement artefacts and unrehearsed learning. Visual analysis of the datasets suggested that summer breaks were not associated with systematic losses of students' reading ability, even among those considered most vulnerable to the phenomenon. However, available assessments and benchmarks are not designed to measure summer learning specifically, and little is known about the kinds of literacy experiences students not in formal programmes might be having. Thus, more research on summer maturation and degeneration is warranted.

中文翻译：

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通过对多个数据集的可视化分析探索暑期阅读效果

从历史上看，人们一直担心学生会因放学时间延长而失去阅读能力，通常是在夏天，但对这种现象的研究产生了不一致的结果。我们对多个数据集进行了探索性视觉分析，以检查 K-5 年级的学生在整个夏季和连续学年的各种阅读能力是否有所下降或提高。档案数据是从美国不同学区没有参加正式暑期阅读计划的学生中获得的。数据按最容易受到夏季损失的群体进行分类：来自经济弱势背景的群体和被认定为残疾的群体。鉴于测量类型和分数的多样性，我们将分数集中在每个测量上” s 特定年级熟练程度的切点，以描述学生在暑假前后的分数如何偏离熟练程度分类。总体而言，学生相对于基准的分数平均保持或提高，并且没有观察到多年来阅读表现的累积下降。对于夏季损失的异常情况，我们提供了可能的替代解释，例如测量人工制品和未经排练的学习。对数据集的直观分析表明，暑假与学生阅读能力的系统性丧失无关，即使是那些被认为最容易受到这种现象影响的学生。然而，可用的评估和基准并不是专门为衡量暑期学习而设计的，对未参加正式课程的学生可能拥有的识字体验类型知之甚少。因此，有必要对夏季成熟和退化进行更多的研究。