Reading proficiently at third-grade is the difference between a high school graduation rate of 90% versus 30%

From The Experience of One New York City High School Cohort: Opportunities, Successes, and Challenges by Aaron Churchill.

In this study, researchers from Teachers College at Columbia University analyzed data from a cohort of 77,501 New York City public school students who entered ninth grade in 2005, seeking connections between students’ high school outcomes and college persistence and their achievement, background characteristics, and school environments. Two findings stand out among many: First, students who failed New York’s third-grade reading exam had significantly lower odds of graduating high school than their peers who passed. Of those who failed third-grade reading, barely one in three graduated high school, compared to a 90 percent graduation rate among those who passed.

Reading proficiently at third-grade is the difference between a high school graduation rate of 90% versus 30%.

Half of all YA book purchases are by adults for their own reading

Well this is interesting and I think explains a lot. From Young Adult Books Attract Growing Numbers of Adult Fans from Bowker.

More than half the consumers of books classified for young adults aren’t all that young. Fully 55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17 – nicknamed YA books -- are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44. Accounting for 28 percent of sales, these adults aren’t just purchasing for others -- when asked about the intended recipient, they report that 78 percent of the time they are purchasing books for their own reading. The insights are courtesy of Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age, an ongoing biannual study from Bowker Market Research that explores the changing nature of publishing for kids.

So basically half of the YA market is actually older adults.

As a bookseller, one of the things we do for our customers is understand the content of books. Over the past couple of decades there has been an increasing volume of problem novels and what most people would consider adult level content: drugs, sex, suicide, abortion, dysfunctional families, etc. Our customers always want to know - Does this book have material I wouldn't want them to read yet? And for a surprisingly large percentage of books, the answer is yes.

I had always assumed it was simply a reflection of the coarsening of society in general compounded by the desire of children to read "up" in terms of content, but it did seem a significant disconnect. If so many parents are uncomfortable with the content, why are publishers pushing the boundaries?

I had also noticed the particular focus of children's literary bloggers in reviewing these books. My sense has always been that they were reviewing the books as adult literature with only an occasional head nod towards children and parents.

But perhaps this report is the explanation. Publishers aren't fulfilling the reading needs of children and parents, they are actually fulfilling a literature lite niche that is masquerading as Young Adult. If these are the topic areas of interest to you, you can blow through these books in two or three days - they aren't that dense or cognitively challenging. It appears we have a bunch of older literary cuckoos in the YA nest.

UPDATE: A report in Publishers Weekly this week, Children's Books: A Shifting Market by Jim Milliot indicates the current numbers:

The popularity of the young adult category is driven largely by adult book buyers. Readers 18 and older accounted for 79% of young adult unit purchases in the December 2012 through November 2013 period, according to Nielsen. The single largest demographic group buying young adult titles in the period was the 18- to 29-year-old age bracket. And even as book buyers age, they still tend to buy most young adult books for themselves rather than for a child or grandchild.

Third Grade reading proficiency and probability of graduating high school on time

From Early Warning Confirmed from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Interesting data.

In 2011, sociologist Donald Hernandez reported that children who do not read proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely to leave school without a diploma than proficient readers. His analysis of data on nearly 4,000 students showed that dropout rates were highest for the children reading below NAEP’s “basic” level: 23 percent of these children failed to graduate on time, compared to 9 percent of children with basic reading skills and 4 percent of proficient readers. Looked at another way, Hernandez found that “children with the lowest reading scores account for a third of students but for more than three-fifths (63 percent) of all children who do not graduate from high school.” He also found that black and Hispanic children who are not reading proficiently in third grade are twice as likely as similar white children not to graduate from high school (about 25 vs. 13 percent).

The report's authors get tangled up in shifting comparisons and their headline story gets lost in the thickets. Third graders who are not proficient in reading are six times more likely to dropout than those who are proficient; a 23% dropout rate versus a 4% dropout rate for proficient readers. Since non-completion of high school is highly correlated with a wide range of other later in life negative outcomes, it reinforces the importance of simply keeping up with reading skill acquisition.

It is intriguing that the report writers then try and muddy the waters by introducing the highly correlated issue of poverty. Why? From their own numbers, if you address the reading skill acquisition problem, you obviate much of the impact of poverty.

The uncharitable conclusion might be that it is hard, complicated and frequently unrewarding and unappreciated work helping people acquire the necessary Knowledge, Experience, Skills, Values and Behaviors (KESVB) associated with good life outcomes whereas it is much more psychologically rewarding to take money from some people to give to others. Very uncharitable but there is an increasing volume of evidence (see the works of William Easterly and Thomas Sowell) that that likely is the dynamic that is occurring.

Eric Hoffer's comments seem pertinent.

When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them.

There are five times as many workers in the top 20 percent than there are in the bottom 20 percent

Well that explains a lot.

From Jared Bernstein’s “Tax Reform” Assault on Pensions, IRAs and 401(k)s by Alan Reynolds. Basically a fairly technical refutation dealing with the arcana of tax and accounting codes. However, in that process, Reynolds points out something I had noticed in Census and BLS data.

There are five times as many workers in the top 20 percent than there are in the bottom 20 percent. To exclude young singles and old retirees, Gerald Mayer examined the work experience of households headed by someone between the working ages of 22 and 62. Average work hours among the poorest 20 percent still amounted to just 1,415 hours a year in 2010, while those in the middle fifth worked 2,771 hours, and the top 20 percent worked 4060 hours.

For all the faux outrage about inequality and social justice, there are hard facts that stand in the way of easy answers. It is numbers like these that in part lead me to believe that our focus should nearly singularly be on helping people to become productive.

Even if the top quintile and bottom quintile were paid exactly the same per hour, the top quintile homes would be three time better off. But you have to factor in the premiums that go with specialized work (much more prevalent in top quintile households), intensity of effort (the person who works 60 hours a week at a job will earn significantly more than three times what the person who works 20 hours a week earns), the premium from duration of work (the person who has ten years of experience earns much more per hour than the person with a year's experience), and the churn premium (the person whose economic and familial circumstances are stable will earn and save much more than the person constantly subject to exogenous shocks). You take those factors into account and all of sudden you are probably looking at a top to bottom quintile ratio of probably 10-15:1. All from individual choices, decision-making, values, and behaviors and nothing to do with structural discrimination, class bias, etc.

It is a complex issue about which we need to know much more and it appears to me that virtually all the outrage appears to be politically manufactured with a significant probability of causing more harm than good.

Grant became so absorbed in the conversation that Lee finally had to remind him of the business at hand

From a review, Muddy Boots and a Slouch Hat by Christopher Robbins in Slightly Foxed, Winter 2012. Robbins is describing Grant's history leading up to the amazing story of his Personal Memoirs. Grant failed at just about everything he turned his hand to except soldiering despite his antipathy for the cruelty of war. Having suffered economic ruin after his Presidency and then diagnosed with throat cancer, Grant determined to write his memoirs in the hope that they would provide a source of support for his soon to be widow. Urged on by Mark Twain who undertook to be his publisher, Grant set to work in late 1884, writing everyday, producing 20-50 pages a day, entirely from memory and with no assistance. He finished in July 1885 and died five days later. It became one of the best-selling books in American history.

One of my favorite passages in Memoirs is the description of Grant accepting the surrender of the Confederate Army's General Robert E. Lee. Grant rode over to the small house where Lee was installed, arriving as muddy and shabby as ever. Lee, on the other hand, was every inch the General, immaculate in a pale grey uniform with gold braided sleeves, a scarlet sash around his waist, a sword hanging at his side. Grant had left his sword behind - it got in the way when riding, he explained.

The admiration Grant felt for Lee almost amounted to a sense of awe and he did not attempt to hide it. As the staff prepared the surrender documents, the Generals chatted about the Mexican War and mutual military acquaintances. (Lee might have been surprised to learn that one of Grant's most trusted staff officers was a Native American.) Grant became so absorbed in the conversation that Lee finally had to remind him of the business at hand.

On an entirely different note, it reminds me of James Thurber's 1930 short story, If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox. Five minutes well spent reading it.

"Shall we proceed at once to the matter in hand?" asked General Lee, his eyes disdainfully taking in the disordered room. "Some of the boys was wrassling here last night," explained Grant. "I threw Sherman, or some general a whole lot like Sherman. It was pretty dark." He handed a bottle of Scotch to the commanding officer of the Southern armies, who stood holding it, in amazement and discomfiture. "Get a glass, somebody," said Grant, looking straight at General Longstreet. "Didn't I meet you at Cold Harbor?" he asked. General Longstreet did not answer.

There's a Youtube version as well.

The written word alone flouts destiny

From Mediaeval Latin Lyrics by Helen Waddell, section 107

No work of men's hands but the weary years
Besiege and take it, comes its evil day.
The written word alone flouts destiny,
Revives the past and gives the lie to Death.

God's finger made its furrows in the rock
In letters, when He gave His folk the law.
And things that are, and have been, and may be,
Their secret with the written word abides.

Bright people and foolish statements OR the wisdom of crowds

What a clanger. From The Mobility Myth by James Surowiecki. I have read one of Surowiecki's books (The Wisdom of Crowds) and it was alright. Not a tight argument, but adequate. But Surowiecki is alarmed by income inequality and low income mobility, the topical feel good issue about which everyone has a self-serving opinion and only a mite understand anything about which they are talking.

Lamenting recent research showing that intergenerational income mobility has been lower than we might have thought, Surowiecki observes that

The middle class isn’t all that mobile, either: only twenty per cent of people born into the middle quintile ever make it into the top one.

If you believe that people's actions contribute to their outcomes, then you wouldn't be especially surprised that there might be unequal outcomes across the quintiles. However, if you believe that life outcome's are not the product of individual efforts but are essentially random, then how many people would you expect from the middle income quintile to end up in the top quintile? Well, twenty percent.

What is the argument being made and what evidence is relevant to that argument? So many laid so low so often over those fundamental issues. Daniel W. Drezner has some interesting observations about how bright, accomplished people can so often grasp the wrong end of the stick in his article, What Nick Kristof Doesn't Get About the Ivory Tower. He observes:

But when it comes to my little patch of academe, international relations, I think Kristof has it mostly wrong. And I think I’m in a unique position to shed some light on why the three tribes that dominate the discussion of foreign affairs—academics, Beltway types and money folks—don’t always get along.

He elaborates that each of the three tribes has distinct strengths not found among the others but also that there are distinct weaknesses. His conclusion is, ironically, not far from that of Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds, that it is not crowds that generate good decisions but rather a distinct configuration of crowds. In order to get to a good decision, you have to have multiple parties present and participating who bring a variety of domains of deep knowledge to the discussion. That variety and depth together is what increases the odds that you will avoid the blind spots that are all too prevalent in any single domain of knowledge.

It is not crowds per se that improve decision making, it is the statistical probability that a populous crowd will happen to have the range of nodes of deep knowledge interacting together which produces the better outcome.

Like avoiding statistical clangers such as middle income quintile people only have a twenty percent chance of ending up in the top income quintile.

Sturgeon's Law

From Wikipedia on Sturgeon's Law

The first written reference to the adage appears in the March 1958 issue of Venture, where Sturgeon wrote:

I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud.[1]

Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms.

Kind of a variation on the Pareto distribution.

Disposed to disturb the peace of society

Those Scottish Enlightenment guys were incredible. They have an extraordinarily long shelf life.

From Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires.

Health, health care, and health insurance are all three different things

From Mammogram Study Exposes Medical Naiveté by Walter Russell Mead, an insight I have not seen put so succinctly elsewhere.

The fundamental truth emerging from much recent work on the US health care system is that health, health care, and health insurance are all three different things. They bear important relationships, of course. But those connections are complex and understudied. We do know that neither health care nor health insurance as we currently use them always improve health. We also know that health is a multifaceted phenomenon that has as much to do with environmental factors or your relationships to other people as to the treatment you receive. But there’s a lot we still don’t know, and that makes policies based on the folk notion of a direct progression from health insurance to health care to health outcomes problematic.