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Literacy Facts

Access to Books is Essential to Reading Development

• Studies show that having access to a wide variety of reading materials is essential if a child is to develop into a strong reader. In fact, the only behavioral measure that correlates significantly with reading scores is the number of books in the home.
• Children who are read to frequently are nearly twice as likely as other children to show three or more skills associated with emerging literacy.
• The more types of reading materials there are in the home, the higher students are in reading proficiency.
• Students who do more reading at home are better readers and have higher math scores.

Children in Poverty are the Most at Risk

• Children from low-income families enter school at a disadvantage. The gap between children from low and high-income families on reading comprehension scores is more than 40 points.
• On average low-income children have far fewer literacy and language experiences at home than their classmates. Low-income children are 50% more likely than children from high-income families to be seven years old or older and still in the first grade.
• Children from low-income families are less likely to attend pre-kindergarten programs, more likely to have trouble with their schoolwork and more likely to repeat grades in school.
• A team of researchers recently concluded that nearly two thirds of the low-income families they studied owned no books for their children.

"Whoever forms a reading habit will never lose it. It is a treasure no one can take from him. It contains wealth that neither poverty, nor old age, nor misery can tarnish. Thieves cannot steal it, nor storms destroy it and, like vintage wine, it can only improve with age."
-- Arthur Langlie