School choice champion Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform has highlighted this alarming statistic. According to the Education Department’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, “only 14 percent of 13-year-olds read for fun almost every day.”  A generation ago, that figure was more than twice as high. Among 9-year-olds, daily reading for pleasure has fallen from nearly 60% to 37%.

You would think that schools would be teaching kids the joy of reading. By the way, if you can’t or won’t read, you can’t write. And if you can’t write, you can’t think.