Double Jeopardy: How Poverty & Third-Grade Reading Skills Influence High School Graduation

No surprise here, but an important study nevertheless.  It's frightening to see the data about how, for most children who are behind at a young age, especially poor and minority children, it's pretty much game over by age 9 or 10, unless lightning strikes and they win a lottery into a KIPP or similar school:

 

Students who don't read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave high school without a diploma than proficient readers, according to a study over time of nearly 4,000 students nationally.

Poverty compounds the problem: Students who have lived in poverty are three times more likely to drop out or fail to graduate on time than their more affluent peers; if they read poorly, too, the rate is six times greater than that for all proficient readers, the study found. For black and Latino students, the combined effect of poverty and poor third grade reading skills makes the rate eight times greater.

Poverty troubles even the best readers: Proficient third graders who have lived in poverty graduate at about the same rate as subpar readers who have never been poor.

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National Study Shows Students Who Don't Read Well in Third Grade Are More Likely to Drop Out or Fail to Finish High School

Annie E. Casey Foundation, which commissioned the report, Double Jeopardy: How Poverty & Third-Grade Reading Skills Influence High School Graduation.