Page 14 - Learning Gap News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> reporter: this kind gardner is learning to read. >> she got down on the ground. >> reporter: though she's still very young, because she lives in a high-risk neighborhood in new jersey educators here provide a literacy coach to make sure she doesn't fall behind. >> it's like being in a race. to assume we all start at the starting line together, it's not american even. >> reporter: acting superintendent raymond oversees the trend in school districts. it has a higher number of at-risk kids and is supposed to receive more funding. last year the state gave him no extra budget money. incredibly, ...

Didn't surprise me, but the statistics shocked me, frankly. let me read them. by sixth grade, low-income students fell three grades behind. by ninth grade, two-thirds of learning gap between income groups. what does this tell us about what we need to do in terms of our educational system? >> it tells us two things. one is that what is going on during the school year may not be quite as bad as we're always hearing. it also tells us where we can focus a lot of effort at reasonably low costs. because summer doesn't, the best summer programs, summer enrichment programs that i saw is i went across ...

City in early june. i agree. >> there you go. >> i think the idea of a summer vacation where kids play ball with each other and they go to parks and do things like that, fine they can do some summer reading but i think it's a healthy thing, frankly. >> the problem you pointed out low income areas there isn't reading during the summer and where the summer slide is. >> we know that high income families, they do fantastic things during the summer. you get sent here. i took my kids to south africa to the world cup. that's a fantastic learning experience but how many people can do that? low income ...