No other skill taught in school and learned by school children is more important than reading. It is the gateway to all other knowledge. Teaching students to read by the end of third grade is the single most important task assigned to elementary schools. Those who learn to read with ease in the early grades have a foundation on which to build new knowledge. Those who do not are doomed to repeated cycles of frustration and failure. - American Federation of Teachers

To learn more about the reading crisis in our country, I highly recommend this website: Children of the Code. It includes hours of videotaped interviews of reading experts, families and children. Some of it will break your heart.