Growing up, I was always strongly encouraged to read. In elementary school, we were sent home with required minutes of reading and, yes, it wasn't THAT strongly monitored (after all, your proof was just your parent signing off), but it was required. In middle school and in high school we read a good number of books. I grant that I was always in honors/AP classes, but my friends in the regular English classes were always reading books for class as well. I think the only time when I was actually reading MORE (versus just reading more complicated material) was in AP Composition, but that's because we read a lot of criticisms and analyses of books and short stories on top of what we were already reading.

I'm 23 and I'm not that far out of school. It has changed a lot and I think things have gone a bit downhill. My mom's a recently retired school teacher and even I have noticed a change vising her classroom. Nothing she's doing, but with the focus moved to testing, she's having to spend a lot more time on specific lessons. She used to set aside time for kids to read, draw, whatever, but she couldn't really do that any more. And she had BOOKS upon BOOKS in her classroom. Everything from just-learning books, to probably about 4th or 5th grade level books (she taught specifically 1st grade/remedial reading, but liked to give all her kids as many options as they wanted).

So...my point is that the picture you painted is not true all over. And that state is 50/50 for education, too.