How serious is the problem of low reading skills nationwide?
The latest National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) indicates that approximately 40 percent of the nation’s fourth graders cannot read at a basic level. Within subgroups, almost 70 percent of low-income fourth grade students and almost 50 percent of students living in urban areas cannot read at a basic level. Sadly, this is the same level of failure that was reported in 1992. While the scores for the nation’s highest-performing students have improved over time, average-performing readers have shown no progress, and the reading performance of our nation’s lowest performing students has declined. And, while a lack of reading skills is the most common reason why students are determined to have a learning disability and need specialized services, only 2.8 million school age students are currently receiving special education services because of LD. That leaves millions of students who struggle to read and who don’t receive any form of specialized services.
