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According to a report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 6.2 million students dropped out of school in 2007. The study, "Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation," also revealed that the 3rd grade seems to be a pivotal year in determining which kids may not make it through high school.

Reading is the foundation of learning

The key seems to be third grade reading. The report, which was released on April 8, 2011, revealed that a student who can't read at grade level in the 3rd grade is four times less likely to graduate from high school by the age of 19 than his peer who reads at or above grade level. Take a 3rd grader living at or below the poverty level who can't read at grade level and the numbers are even more sobering. That child is 13 times less likely to graduate from school on time.

Study author and sociology professor Donald J. Hernandez said "We teach reading for the first three grades and then after that children are not so much learning to read but using their reading skills to learn other topics. In that sense if you haven't succeeded by 3rd grade it's more difficult to [remediate] than it would have been if you started before then."

To come to his conclusion, Hernadez used the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 along with analysis of reading scores and graduation rates of 3,975 students born between 1979 and 1989. He found that while 16 percent of the students in the study did not have a high school diploma by age 19 overall, those who struggled with reading by third grade comprised a whopping 88 percent of those who hadn't received a high school diploma by age 19. Poverty and poor reading skills by 3rd grade definitely represented a double-whammy where graduation rates were concerned, however those in poverty who read at grade level or higher by 3rd grade had a graduation level of 89 percent.

For more Schools.com coverage on elementary education, please read:

Memoirs of a first-year, first-grade teacher aide