The need is urgent for reducing literacy achievement gaps--both morally to ensure that all students receive a high-quality education as well as economically to build our nation's workforce with the requisite skills needed for the 21st century. Taken together, changes to the economy, divergent literacy skill distributions, and changes to the demographic composition of the U.S. population create a perfect storm of factors that will increase social and economic inequalities as well as affect the United States' ability to be a competitive global leader (Kirsch, Braun, Yamamoto, & Sum, 2007). This report explores how and when literacy achievement gaps develop and argues that effective summer literacy programs for low-achieving students in the middle grades offer promise as a way to reduce those gaps to ensure later academic and economic success.