C. Other Outcomes
In addition to an effect on students’ reading abilities, encouraging children to read in school
could also have effects on other outcomes as well. First, due to their improved reading skills,
students may have been better equipped to study other subjects since it might allow them to read
textbooks or other classroom materials. Table 7, which has a similar format as Table 5, presents
the estimated treatment effects on the other subjects tested during the follow-up surveys. We find
no effect on either subject. However, in the second follow-up survey, the treatment effect for
social studies is of the same magnitude as the effect on the reading test. It is insignificant because
it is measured less precisely.15
Second, although teachers reportedly never allowed children to take books home,16
reading more in school may also have made children more likely to read outside of school. To
assess this, we asked children the same kinds of questions about their reading activities at home
as at school. Table 8 presents the estimated results. Overall, we find a small, but statistically
significant effect on both surveys. For the first follow-up survey, only the effect of 1.24 on the
number of books read in the last month is individually significant, but jointly, all of the estimates are statistically significant at the 1 percent level. In the second follow-up survey, the standard
errors fall significantly, and although the point estimates are similar to those in the first round, all
but the effect on the probability of reading any book outside of schools (row one) are statistically
significant at conventional levels. This suggests that engaging students in reading in school
increased the number of books read outside of school as well. But like the effect on test scores,
the effect declined after the read-a-thon. 17