Reading to Learn

I imagine early childhood educators know this truism well, but I didn't know it and it made me sit up and take notice:

The next pitfall [for children struggling in school] is third grade. 'Because third grade is a magic year,' [Harold] Fitrer says, 'It's the year you switch from learning to read to reading to learn.' The transition is so crucial, he says, that many cities use third-grade reading scores to predict how many jail beds they'll need in the future.

From an article in Style (June 6, 2012) about the city's last-resort programs.