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According to studies from the United States and English Canada, student achievement gaps grow over the summer months when children are not attending school, but summer literacy interventions can reduce those gaps. This paper presents data from a quasi-experiment conducted in eight Ontario French language school boards in 2010, 2011 and 2012 for 682 children in grades 1-3. Growth in literacy test scores between June and September are compared for 361 attendees of summer literacy programs and 321 control students. Summer program recruits initially had lower prior literacy scores and grades, and tended to hail from relatively disadvantaged social backgrounds. Yet, summer programs narrowed those pre-existing gaps. Effect sizes from a variety of regression and propensity score matching models ranged from .32 to .58, which is quite sizeable by the standards of elementary school interventions and summer programs. Effects were stronger among students whose parents reported not speaking French exclusively at home. Our paper considers learning opportunity theory in light of the "non-traditional" student in Ontario French language schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the mode of entry into adulthood of two cohorts of young Quebecers born between 1942-1951 (lyric generation) and between 1962-1971 (X generation). Examining the net effect of labour market casualization with the help of the General Social Survey 2001's retrospective data, the goal of this paper is to answer this specific question: to what extent do the 1980- 90 economic mutations explain the extension of youth and the desynchronization of life courses? The analysis reveals that the casualization of employment is not highly related to the mutations of life courses. In fact, the desynchronization of life courses can be better explained by noneconomic transformations such as the longer length of education and the easing of certain normative constraints within Quebec society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the reasons often provided for the salary gap between immigrants and native-born Canadians is the difficulty experienced by many immigrants in securing recognition for skills acquired overseas. In this paper, we examine the extent to which, after arrival, immigrants find jobs in the same occupations in which they were employed in their home countries. We also examine the effect on earnings of a match between the pre- and post-immigration occupations. The data come from the longitudinal survey "Établissement des nouveaux immigrants" which followed a cohort of immigrants who arrived in 1989. Our results suggest that most recent immigrants move into a new occupation when they arrive in Canada and that those whose pre- and post-immigration occupations match tend to earn more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]