Are you talking about the Early Childhood longitudinal study? I could not find anything about Levitt actually having contributed to this study, I only found evidence of him talking about this study, either on NPR or in his book.
My personal education research advisor, _MWife_, thought the conclusions highly dubious, because she believes that the data is not suited for this approach. She thinks that she would be hard-pressed to come up with a study design that could tease out the differences that Levitt is trying to make here.
_MWife_'s interpretation suggestion is that the study shows that a statistically significant portion of the parents are not honest about what they do with their children. That's why the actions appear to make no difference. However, there are material indicators that give the researchers insight into the attitudes the parents display when the researchers leave the house.
For this reason, using the number of books in the house to get a handle on the importance of reading (both as a behavior and as a modeling attitude) is a standard technique in education research.
_MWife_ also points out that there are studies (such as this one) that show that the disparity in reading performance between economically well-situated and disadvantaged children is most prominent during the months of the summer. While during the school year, young children learn at about the same rate, the disadvantaged children start with a deficit when rejoining school in the fall, because the summer months remove their access to books (either at home or elsewhere) and to interested adults (that say, might take them to the library). Summer book reading programs with free book donations to the disadvantaged children have proven effective in this respect.
My personal education research advisor, _MWife_, thought the conclusions highly dubious, because she believes that the data is not suited for this approach. She thinks that she would be hard-pressed to come up with a study design that could tease out the differences that Levitt is trying to make here.
_MWife_'s interpretation suggestion is that the study shows that a statistically significant portion of the parents are not honest about what they do with their children. That's why the actions appear to make no difference. However, there are material indicators that give the researchers insight into the attitudes the parents display when the researchers leave the house.
For this reason, using the number of books in the house to get a handle on the importance of reading (both as a behavior and as a modeling attitude) is a standard technique in education research.
_MWife_ also points out that there are studies (such as this one) that show that the disparity in reading performance between economically well-situated and disadvantaged children is most prominent during the months of the summer. While during the school year, young children learn at about the same rate, the disadvantaged children start with a deficit when rejoining school in the fall, because the summer months remove their access to books (either at home or elsewhere) and to interested adults (that say, might take them to the library). Summer book reading programs with free book donations to the disadvantaged children have proven effective in this respect.
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