Need

Reading is the gateway skill:

• Being able to read is integrally tied to succeeding in every subject in school, including math and science.

• Children who are behind in reading often have low confidence in their ability to learn, miss out on the joy of learning and decline to participate in the classroom.

Children's literacy is in crisis:

• In California, 88% of fourth-graders from low-income communities are reading below grade level.¹

Children from low-income families lack advantages:

• Only 36% of parents with a low socioeconomic status read to their children every day.²

• Children from low-income families often have parents who hold two jobs, have literacy challenges of their own and don't have the time or skills available to help their children succeed in school.

Once a child falls behind, the problem compounds:

• Every month, a student's reading gap gets larger and larger.³ In order to catch up, a student would need to progress at a rate over and above a "normal" student who is at grade level.

• By high school, one in four students in California drop out.⁴
  

Literacy problems lead to greater societal problems:

• Seven out of ten inmates perform at the lowest levels in reading skills – more than triple the rate of the general population.⁵
  

• 85% of juvenile offenders have problems associated with reading and writing.⁵

¹2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress

²Coley, Richard J., An Uneven Start: Indicators of Inequality in School Readiness (PDF file), Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, 2002, p 56.

³Stanovich, K. (1986) "The Matthew Effects in Reading:  Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy."  Reading Research Quarterly, vol 21.

⁴California Department of Education 2008

⁵National Center for Education Statistics.  Literacy Behind Prison Walls, U.S. Department of Education:  October, 1994.