Dr. Phil McGraw

And those kids that went through that, they lost everything.

What, a year of learning?

Some of it's been made back, but they were behind to begin with.

And what are the long-term consequences of that?

Well, the pediatric epidemiologists suggest that millions of years of life have been lost.

And I'll tell you why.

Because they don't close the achievement gap.

which means they don't do as well in school, so they don't get as good of jobs, and the more blue-collar jobs are riskier because they're working with their hands.

They're working in places where they're more inclined to get injured.

or killed on the job.

They have poorer benefits in lesser jobs.

So diseases get diagnosed more slowly.

And so they get treated later in the disease progression, which means that there's a higher mortality rate.

And so that shaves off

More years off their life.

And if you've got somewhere between 50 and 55 million kids in the public school system, and however many of them were affected by this, do the math.

It doesn't take shaving very many years off at the end of the life to – I've seen estimates anywhere from 5.5 million to –

10 million years of lives lost by the fact that they won't have the achievement that they might have had otherwise.

And there are some efforts being made to close the gap, but not enough, and the gaps haven't been closed.

Right now, 30% of fifth graders and about 30% of eighth graders can't read at the most basic level.