- Only 48% of parents read to their preschoolers daily.
- Eighty-five percent of all juveniles interfacing with the court system are functionally illiterate.
- The majority of children with functionally illiterate parents become illiterate themselves.
- A child's library use raises his or her fourth grade assessment scores.
- Thirteen percent of Pennsylvanians lack basic literacy skills such as the ability to read a newspaper or brochure. This percentage of Pennsylvanians who struggle with basic literacy remains unchanged from 1992.
- Children have watched 5,000 hours of TV before they get to kindergarten. By the end of sixth grade, children will have watched 100,000 acts of televised violence.
- If 50 first-graders have trouble reading, 44 of them will have reading problems in the fourth grade.
- By age three, children from privileged families have heard 30 million more words than children from underprivileged families. The three-year-old measure predicts third grade school achievement.
- More than 75% of jobs in Pennsylvania demand education beyond high school. And yet, nearly 120,000 Pennsylvania youth ages 16-24 have dropped out of high school.
- Postsecondary institutions provided remedial coursework for nearly a third of entering freshmen in 2007-2008; public two-year colleges provided such coursework for 42% of their entering students.
- Fifty percent of the nation's unemployed youth ages 16-21 are functional illiterates with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs.
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