Facts & Figures

In Guilford County Schools

• As reported in the state’s End-of-Grade (EOG) tests, from 2008 to 2009, the percentage of GCS students shown as proficient increased by 11 percentage points in reading – from 54 percent in 2008 to 65 percent in 2009.
  
• The district’s achievement gap in reading has narrowed from the 2007-08 school year to the 2008-09 school year, but is still unacceptable. In 2007-08, there was a 37.1 percentage gap for reading, while the latest results show a 33.1 percentage gap.
  
• Several strategies in the district’s strategic plan address literacy.
• I.1  Provide early literacy intervention to identified K-2 students
• I.2  Provide reading interventions at middle and high school
• I.3  Use a balanced literacy approach as core reading instruction and intervention in reading and language arts K-12
• I.4  Refocus writing instruction that will address writing at all grade levels

In Guilford County

• In Guilford County, more than 20,000 adults aged 18-25 (approximately 10 percent) have less than a grade nine education.

From an early age

• If students are not reading at grade level by the third grade, it becomes harder and harder to catch up
  

To high school

• According to the American Speech Language & Hearing Association, poor reading and writing skills have a devastating lifelong impact – 75 percent of school dropouts report reading problems, and at least half of adolescents and young adults with criminal records have reading difficulties.
  
• Twenty percent of high school seniors can be classified as being functionally illiterate at the time they graduate (National Right to Read Foundation)

To adulthood

• The National Coalition for Literacy reports that an estimated 93 million U.S. adults have basic and below basic literacy skills.
  
• Seventy percent of prisoners in state and federal systems can be classified as illiterate, while 85 percent of all juvenile offenders rate as functionally or marginally illiterate.
  
• Forty-three percent of those whose literacy skills are lowest live in poverty.