States use third-grade reading scores to determine how many prison beds they will need in the future.
Even though this claim has been widely debunked, there seems to be no shortage of highly intelligent and influential people who not only believe it is true but will repeat it in earnest — and often unchallenged — in front of crowds of similarly intelligent and influential people.
These are people who — some of whom hold Ph.D.s — have deluded themselves into believing that there are actually governmental agencies where officials go through the trouble it takes to procure and analyze state education data so that they can use it to inform their prison construction plans.
Usually, the purveyors of this claim use it to try to emphasize the importance of teaching children to read early in life, lest children fall behind academically and never catch up, and wind up being relegated to a life of crime as a result.
I can recall several instances in which I have witnessed accomplished professional people proffer the idea that third grade illiteracy rates are used to calculate the need for future prison space.
For instance, back in 2012, Paula Kerger, president and CEO of PBS, made the claim in her “headline remarks” at a forum on education technology as she touted how PBS promotes literacy in young children. (Start watching at 1:08:25.)
“California decides how many prison cells it will need to build based on the reading scores of its third graders,” Kerger said matter-of-factly, explaining that she makes it a point to include the “statistic” in every speech that she gives around the country.
