Findings From A Randomized Controlled Trial, And The Impact We’re Making

Over a five-year period, from 2018 to 2023, we embarked on a journey to build evidence about the impact of book ownership. Specifically, Bernie’s Book Bank participated in a five-year randomized controlled trial (RCT) designed to measure the impact of Bernie’s Book Bank providing free, high-quality books on students’ literacy achievement.

In a school-level randomized controlled trial, generously funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and conducted by Dr. Geoffrey Borman in partnership with Milwaukee Public Schools, the study randomly assigned sixty schools to either receive the Bernie’s Book Bank book distribution intervention (the treatment group) or to a waitlist control group that would not receive the books until the conclusion of the study. In the treatment schools, Bernie’s Book Bank would provide all kindergarten through sixth-grade students with an average of seven high-quality free books per year, or a total of 34 free books over a five-year period.

The study findings? Students from Bernie’s Book Bank schools achieved statistically significant reading gains relative to their counterparts in control schools.

Specifically, the study tracked students who were in grades 1 and 2, respectively, at the start of the study and who remained within the school district over a five-year period (2018-2023), through grades 5 and 6, respectively – and found that students in Bernie’s Book Bank schools achieved higher scores on the spring 2023 standardized state literacy assessment (the Wisconsin Forward Exam, the study’s primary outcome). The observed effect on literacy achievement would translate to approximately 25-32% of a school year in additional learning, relative to the controlled group.[1]

For those students who attended Bernie’s Book Bank schools at the beginning of the study and remained in those schools through the five-year follow-up and therefore received multiple years of books, the impact on literacy achievement was even larger – the equivalent of approximately 52-65% of a typical school year’s growth.

All at a cost of $16 per child per year.

To our knowledge, Bernie’s Book Bank is the only active nonprofit organization to participate in an RCT directly evaluating the effectiveness of a comprehensive free book distribution program, and that has been found to produce positive, long-term effects on literacy achievement.[2] It’s simple really – we believe better futures begin with books, and we’re committed to building the evidence.