Third grade is a turning point year. It turns out students who don’t read proficiently by that grade were much more likely to drop out of high school or not finish on time, a new report says.

Children who did not read well in third grade were four times more likely not to complete their traditional high school years with a diploma, according to the analysis released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation Friday.

While these struggling readers account for about a third of the students, they
represent more than three fifths of those who eventually drop out or fail to graduate on time. – “Double Jeopardy: How Poverty & Third-Grade Reading Skills Influence High School Graduation.” 4/11.

The report is full of interesting research about the importance of reading by third grade. Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of students who struggled the most with reading, “low below-basic readers,” dropped out or didn’t complete high school on time, the report says. Only nine percent of students with basic reading skills and four percent who were proficient dropped out or didn’t finish on time, according to the report.

Not surprisingly, rates among children living in poverty were even higher.

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

Now this is an early learning news blog. Why are we writing about third grade and high school?  Reading skills begin developing well before kindergarten, and well-researched early literacy development programs – I am not talking about flashcards – such as Culture of Literacy can help.  (It is a Thrive by Five Washington initiative.)

Reading by third grade matters. And if educators wait until kindergarten to encourage literacy skills it can be too late.