Energy Express is a West Virginia University Extension program that provides services to children living in rural West Virginia in either a five- or six-week format during the summer break. The focus of the program is to promote school success, and in order to do so, Energy Express sets both nutritional and scholastic goals for the program each year. The program attempts to meet nutritional goals by providing the children who participate with a nutritious breakfast and lunch each day. Scholastic goals are addressed through activities that aim to maintain or improve the participants’ reading skills over the summer break.
The purpose of this quasi-experimental design impact evaluation is to assess the effectiveness of the Energy Express program in stopping the loss of reading skills over the summer.
Research Questions
- Do children who fully participate (at least 50% attendance) in Energy Express have significant improvement in reading fluency as measured by age-appropriate, standardized tests?
- Do parents of children who participate in Energy Express perceive that their children read for pleasure more often than they did before the program?
- Do children who fully participate in Energy Express have significantly greater improvement in reading fluency compared to a non-participant comparison group?
Evaluation Findings
- Findings suggest that participants made significant gains in Composite reading scores.
- 88% of the parents responded positively when asked if Energy Express helped increase their child’s literacy.
- When parents/caregivers were asked to rate their child’s experience in the 2023 session, 83% chose Excellent, 13% chose Good, 3% indicated Poor and 0.5% said their child had a Terrible experience.
Full report
Further information
West Virginia Commission