How much are children reading?

Following up on yesterday's about children actually read, another source is from Renaissance Learning who administer the Accelerated Reading program designed to monitor and improve children's reading abilities. The program is widely used (by perhaps 37% of children in lower grades) it is also widely criticized. A number of studies indicate that it is effective in improving reading test scores. On the other hand it is criticized for not improving critical thinking. There is among teachers, particularly especially good ones, a visceral dislike for AR.

All that said, it does provide an interest annual report, What Kids Are Reading with a lot of data, constrained by the circumstances of the program as it might be.

In grades 2 - 5 there are about a million and a half reading participants in each grade, about 37% of all kids in each of those age ranges. RL measures the number of books a child reads as well as the number of words in each of those books thus allowing an overall measure of volume of reading in terms of number of words per year.

Sheer volume of book exposure peaks in second grade at 55 books per reader.
The average student in high school is reading just over 5 books a year (but about 300,000 words per reader).
Reading volume (words per reader) rises from first grade to sixth grade when it peaks at 419,000 words per year.
Reading then falls 25% till ninth grade when it stabilizes at around 300,000 words per year for the rest of high school.
The gender balance starts out in balance from first to sixth grade at about 52% of reading done by girls and 48% by boys.
From sixth grade to ninth, the ratio widens dramatically. From ninth grade on girls do about 58% of all reading and boys about 42%.
There are only about 8% as many participants in 12th grade as there are in first grade/
Nonfiction only shows up once among the 20 most popular titles for each grade.