• The Child poverty rate is 26% in TN and 26.5% in KY.

• Vocabulary development by age 3 has been found to predict reading achievement… By age 3, children from wealthier families have typically heard 30 million more words than children from low-income families. (AEC, 2010)
• Children from low-income families lack early interactions that lead to language development including being read to and access to books in the home. New data show that children from low-income families have one-fourth the vocabulary of children from wealthier homes. (NPR, 2011).
• By the time children from low-income families enter kindergarten, they are 12-14 months below national norms in language & pre-reading skills. (AEC, 2010)
• A child from a middle-income family typically enters first grade with about 1,000 hours of one-on-one picture book reading time with parents, other relatives, or teachers, compared with a child from a low-income family, who averages less than 100 hours. (AECF)
• First graders from lower-income families have a vocabulary half the size of children from higher-income families. (AECF)
• Among adults with the lowest level of literacy proficiency, 43% live in poverty.  Among adults with strong literacy skills, only 4% live in poverty. (First Book)
• Over the course of their lifetimes, [adults and children who are illiterate or have low literacy skills] will cost the U.S. more than a quarter of a million dollars each.   (First Book)

 

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