2029 By 2029, prisons will house almost 30,000 of the 600,000 African American four-year-olds now living in the country, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry.

2020 To participate fully in society and the workplace in 2020, citizens will need powerful literacy abilities that until now have been achieved by only a small percentage of the population, Literacy Statistics Reference Information.

2010 Approximately 50 percent of the nation's unemployed youth age 16-21 are functional illiterate, with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs, US Dept. of Health and Human Services.

2006 More than 8 million U.S. students in grades 4-12 struggle to read, write, and comprehend adequately, Nationmaster.com

Source: Courtesy of Educational Cyber PlayGround & National Center for Educational Statistics

Community Need

Most of the reading problems faced by today's adolescents and adults are the result of problems that might have been avoided or resolved in their early childhood years. "Reading is typically acquired relatively predictably by children who… have had experiences in early childhood that fostered motivation and provided exposure to literacy in use." National Research Council, 2000

The single most significant factor influencing a child’s early educational success is an introduction to books and being read to at home prior to beginning school. National Commission on Reading, 1985.

The only behavior measure that correlates significantly with reading scores is the number of books in the home. Children who have not already developed some basic literacy practices when they enter school are three to four times more likely to drop out in later years. National Adult Literacy Survey, 1993.

68 percent of low-income 4th graders cannot read at a basic level. In fact, despite $120 billion in federal spending since 1965 to raise the achievement of poor children, a wide educational attainment gap remains between rich and poor students. Reading Statistics