LITERACY CAMPAIGN

• The educational careers of 25 to 40 percent of American children are imperiled because they don't read well enough, quickly enough, or easily enough. 

• Five to six year olds have a vocabulary of 2,500-5,000 words. 

• 14% of all individuals have a learning disability.

• It is estimated that more than $2 billion is spent each year on students who repeat a grade because they have reading problems.

• Since 1983, more than 10 million Americans reached the 12th grade without having learned to read at a basic level. In the same period, more than 6 million Americans dropped out of high school altogether.

• Over one million children drop out of school each year, costing the nation over $240 billion in lost earnings, forgone tax revenues, and expenditures for social services.

• More than 20 percent of adults read at or below a fifth-grade level - far below the level needed to earn a living wage.

• Approximately 50 percent of the nation's unemployed youth age 16-21 are functional illiterate, with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs.

• 44 million adults in the U.S. can't read well enough to read a simple story to a child. 

• Nearly half of America's adults are poor readers, or "functionally illiterate." They can't carry out simply tasks like balancing check books, reading drug labels or writing essays for a job.

• 21 million Americans can't read at all, 45 million are marginally illiterate and one-fifth of high school graduates can't read their diplomas.

• Children who have not developed some basic literacy skills by the time they enter school are 3 - 4 times more likely to drop out in later years. 
• 46% of American adults cannot understand the label on their prescription medicine. 

• 15% of all 4th graders read no faster than 74 words per minute, a pace at which it would be difficult to keep track of ideas as they are developing within the sentence and across the page.

• 50 percent of American adults are unable to read an eighth grade level book.

• There are almost half a million words in our English Language - the largest language on earth, incidentally - but a third of all our writing is made up of only twenty-two words. 

WHAT ARE WE DOING TO HELP? (click here)