Poverty Troubles Even the Best Readers

Double Jeopardy:
How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation
Annie E. Casey Foundation: April 2011

Students who don’t read proficiently by 3rd grade are 4 times more likely to leave high school without a diploma than proficient readers, according to a study over time of nearly 4,000 students nationally.

Poverty compounds the problem: Students who have lived in poverty are 3 times more likely to drop out or fail to graduate on time than their more affluent peers; if they read poorly, too, the rate is 6 times greater than that for all proficient readers, the study found. For black and Latino students, the combined effect of poverty and poor 3rd grade reading skills makes the rate 8 times greater.

Poverty troubles even the best readers: Proficient 3rd graders who have lived in poverty graduate at about the same rate as subpar readers who have never been poor.

The findings include:
- 1 in 6 children who are not reading proficiently in 3rd grade do not graduate from high school on time, a rate 4 times greater than that for proficient readers.

- The rates are highest for the low, below-basic readers: 23% of these children drop out or fail to finish high school on time, compared to 9% of children with basic reading skills and 4% of proficient readers. 

- Overall, 22% of children who have lived in poverty do not graduate from high school, compared to 6% of those who have never been poor. This rises to 32% for students spending more than half of their childhood in poverty. 

- For children who were poor for at least a year and were not reading proficiently in
3rd grade, the proportion that don’t finish school rose to 26%. That’s more than 6 times the rate for all proficient readers. 

- The rate was highest for poor Black and Hispanic students, at 31 and 33% respectively—or about 8 times the rate for all proficient readers. 

- Even among poor children who were proficient readers in 3rd grade, 11% still didn’t finish high school. That compares to 9% of subpar 3rd grade readers who have never been poor. 

- Among children who never lived in poverty, all but 2% of the best 3rd grade readers graduated from high school on time. 

- Graduation rates for Black and Hispanic students who were not proficient readers in 3rd grade lagged far behind those for White students with the same reading skills.

Kids Count
A national and state-by-state effort to track the status of children in the United States