Why Kids Can't Read - Reading Failure and Its Effect on High School Drop-Out Rates

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They may have problems discriminating the differences among individual sounds in spoken words
They may have problems understanding the relationship between the sounds of spoken words and the letters that represent those sounds
They may not be able to read fluently - quickly and accurately and instead struggle with each word
They may have limited vocabulary or background knowledge
They may have limited reading comprehension and have difficulty understanding what they are reading.

There is an increasing demand for literacy in school and at work
Large numbers of fourth grade children are performing below the basic reading level (National Center for Educational Statistics , 2003)
An increasing number of minority and poor children are not learning to read as well as their white counterparts (National Center for Educational Statistics, NAEP 2004)

There is a filtering out of students as they proceed through the pipeline through college graduation.

Their average earnings of $22,000 per year is close to the poverty line for a family of four
Almost 50% of heads of households are on welfare
They have 8 times the poverty rate of college graduates
Their average lifetime wages are $1,000,000 less than a college graduate
They are twice as likely to smoke
They have 19 times the incarceration rate of a college graduate
They comprise almost 50% of the prison population
A one-year increase in the average years of schooling for high school dropouts would reduce murder and assault by almost 30%, car theft by 20% and arson by 13%
They have significantly higher drug and alcohol abuse
They earn only 22% as much as a professional degree holder and 40% of a college graduate
Their children are more than 50% less likely to go to college
They are 10 times as likely to default on a loan
They are 57% less likely to vote