To help avoid the “achievement gap” between high- and low-performing students in school, one thing parents can do is very simple: read to children, especially at an early age.

Young children who are read to may be better able to reach their full potential in school and life. Reading is important in that it is foundational for all other learning.

According to the Children’s Reading Foundation, a five-year range of literacy skill is common in elementary classrooms. That is, students may be at grade level, or perhaps two years ahead or as much as three years behind when it comes to literacy skills.

Children who lag in reading skills tend to lag in other aspects of their education over the years. The long-term impact of this can affect high school graduation rates as well as university enrollment.

Major gaps in reading skills can be measured even before a child begins school.

According to CRF, poverty is also a factor, with children of parents in poverty or in the working class having a vocabulary by age 3 that may be half as large as children of college-educated parents. The number of words a child hears per hour can vary from 616 from families in poverty to 1,251 words for working-class families to 2,153 words per hour from professional families.

Fortunately, taking time out to read to a child for around 20 minutes per day is neither expensive nor especially time consuming, and is something that parents of all social strata can do to help their children.

Central Kitsap School District Board member Rob MacDermid recently said that the CRF’s “Ready for Kindergarten” program was a “force multiplier.”

“We lighten the load of our teachers and make their job easier,” MacDermid said, when young children are read to.

Reading to children is low-cost, high-return investment.

Learn more at readingfoundation.org.