Facts About Children's Literacy
Why reading is so important

Access to books is fundamental to reading success:

· Increasing access to print material is the most successful way to improve the reading achievement of low-income children. Communities ranking high in achievement tests have several factors in common: an abundance of books in public libraries, easy access to books in the community at large, and a large number of text books per student.
· In a study comparing reading literacy in the U.S. with other countries, the National Center for Education Statistics found that nearly two-thirds of the low-income American families they studied owned no books for their children.
· A study by the International Reading Association found that television sets were more prominent in low-income childcare centers than books. Over 80% of these centers lacked book corners, age-appropriate books, and other print materials for young children.
· In two-thirds of the classrooms across the United States, reports the International Reading Association, there are fewer than 50 children's books. In fact, over 28% of classrooms, according to the directors of the programs, are likely to have less than one book per child.

Children who read frequently are better readers and better students:

· The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2000 national reading assessment of fourth-grade students found that reading for fun had a positive relationship to performance on NAEP reading scores. The 87% of students who reported reading for fun on their own time once a month or more performed at the Proficient level, while students who never or hardly ever read for fun performed at the Basic level. Students who read for fun every day scored the highest.
· Fourth-graders who reported reading for fun daily scored higher on the NAEP assessment than their peers who reported less frequent reading for fun. There was no statistically significant change between 1992 and 2000 in the percentage of fourth-graders reading for fun daily, but the percentage of students who never or hardly ever read for fun increased between 1994 and 2000 from 12% to 14%.
· The NAEP also found that fourth-graders who reported reading 11 or more pages daily for school and for homework had higher reading test scores than students who read fewer pages daily. Sixty percent of fourth-graders reported reading 11 or more pages daily for school and for homework in 2000, compared to 54% in 1994 and 56% in 1992.
· U.S. readers get off to a fast start, but they begin to falter during early adolescence. A study released by International Reading Association involved 200,000 students in 31 nations. United States nine-year olds were second only to Finland in reading achievement. Fourteen-year olds in the United States, while still scoring above average, ranked 9th. Similarly, while fourth-and eighth-grade average scores on the 1998 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 1999) were stable, the reading scores for 11th grade students dropped

Taking time to read with a child is one of the most important lessons that adults can share with their children:

· More than half (51%) of young people say that their parents do not encourage them to read other than for schoolwork. These findings provide evidence that this type of parental involvement is important—children who report that their parents encourage them to read are more likely to read a high volume of books (63% read more than 10 books a year) than those who say their parents leave it up to them (51% read more than 10 books a year)
· When asked to compare the amount of time that they spend reading with the amount of time their parents spend reading, more than a third (36%) of young people, including 42% of young women and 30% of young men, report that they read more in their spare time than their parents