National Read Across America Day puts the spotlight on reading proficiency.

Interesting article on Takepart.com that discusses the education problems in the United States and their links to literacy. The issues with illiteracy and previously disadvantaged and poor communities echoes those that we face in South Africa.
“Education policy analysts agree that mastering reading by the end of third grade is a critical touchstone for young learners. That grade is the turning point between learning to read and reading to learn. Students who miss that benchmark are up to four times more likely to drop out of high school. Among struggling readers, the dropout rates are twice as high for African American and Latino students as they are for white students,” reads the article by former White house correspondent Joseph Williams.
“An inability to read proficiently, coupled with a broken school system that may be more interested in pushing students to the next grade level than in ensuring learning, tends to trigger a chain reaction, experts say. Frustration in the classroom leads to truancy or disruptive behavior and ultimately quitting school altogether, one of the conduits in the schools-to-prison pipeline.
There’s good news, however: A growing number of federal and local education policy officials, along with ed-reform advocates and community activists, have recognized that making sure every child can read proficiently ahead of high school is the ounce of prevention that can eliminate the need for more costly solutions for students later.
Under the new Every Student Succeeds Act, states have access to federal money that can help them create comprehensive literacy programs from preschool to high school. My Brother’s Keeper, President Barack Obama’s signature initiative aimed at boys and young men of color, also includes components to improve literacy among African American and Latino boys and teenagers.”
That’s why on National Read Across America Day, which is celebrated in America on the birthday of author Theodor Seuss Geisel, or Dr. Seuss, experts from education policy think tanks to the White House are focusing on literacy as a way to stem the stubborn “graduation gap” that the States are faced with. “Reading is being promoted as a way to end the above-average dropout rate of minority kids compared with whites—and plug the school-to-prisons pipeline.”
In South Africa, we celebrate many events and days that promote literacy. The South African Booksellers Association celebrates World Book Day on the 23 April in 2016. For this important advocacy programme we are partnering with Exclusive Books, Bargain Books, Wordsworth Books to deliver books to the hands of children that can ill afford them. The concept is simple, visit a participating book store, but one of the promoted books for R25 and drop it in the donation bin.