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Literacy Facts
The Price of Illiteracy is Staggering
by Voyager Expanded Learning
Scribed by Kathy O'Neal
*The first educational law passed in Colonial America extracted a fine on the parents of children who could not read.
*Research from the Department of Education and the National Institute of child Health and Human Development establishes that all but 2 to 5% of children attending America's public schools can become successful readers if taught appropriately.
*Almost 70% or two out of three fourth graders in the U.S. cannot read at grade level.
*Average reading scores for 9-year-old public school students are lower today than they were 20 years ago.
*70% of prison inmates are functionally illiterate.
*70% of all Americans arrested each year are illiterate.
*75% of unemployed adults are illiterate.
*75% of school dropouts are illiterate.
*85% of juvenile offenders are illiterate.
*86% of unwed teenage mothers are illiterate.
*Illiteracy cost the U.S. more than $225 billion a year in lost productivity.
*Some states now base their projections for future prison construction, in part, on the number of second graders who are not reading at grade level.
*Statistics show that 80%-90% of children in public schools who are unable to read by the end of first grade will never learn to read.
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Last Updated 4/17/09 11:09 pm by Site Administrator
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