Why should third-grade reading scores matter to me?

The Annie E. Casey Foundation did a study in 2010 titled Early Warning! Why Reading By The End Of Third Grade Matters.
This study found:

• …that if we don’t get dramatically more children on track as proficient readers, the United States will lose a growing and essential proportion of its human capital to poverty and the price will be paid not only by individual children and families but by the entire country.

• …the low-income fourth-graders who cannot meet NAEP’s* proficient level in reading today are all too likely to become our nation’s lowest-income, least-skilled, least-productive, and most costly citizens tomorrow. Simply put, without a dramatic reversal of the status quo, we are cementing educational failure and poverty into the next generation.

By The Numbers:

• The median annual income of a high school dropout in 2007 was $23,000, compared with $48,000 for someone who obtained a bachelor’s or higher degree- a considerable difference for anyone trying to support a family and be economically self-sufficient.

• Every student who does not complete high school costs our society an estimated $260,000 in lost earnings, taxes, and productivity.

• The current pool of qualified high school graduates is neither large enough nor skilled enough to supply our nation’s workforce, higher education, leadership, and national security needs.

*NAEP: National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. The marker we use for measuring success is the proficiency level defined by NAEP. The NAEP test is given at the beginning of the fourth grade, so it tests what a child has learned by the end of the third grade (and over the intervening summer).