This matches my own experience. For as long as I can remember, I've read. My parents read to me as a very young child, and as I grew older, I was encouraged to read. I had access to the local public library, the Scholastic Book Club, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. By the end of middle school, I'd read every Star Wars Extended Universe book and every Pern novel published to date (and the former was not a small list, even then).
So then, come high school, everyone was tested for the new reading program that was supposed to get everyone's reading ability caught up. My test results came back as reading at above college level, no intervention needed. That surprised even me at the time. I was told I couldn't be removed from the mandatory program, but I didn't need the points either, and so I should just read whatever I wanted from the approved books list and not worry about it.
I recount this, not to toot my own horn, but to point out that by having been such a voracious reader as a youth, I probably had far more practice at reading than many of my peers. And practice is what really develops and cements a skill. All those years spent reading gave me a great deal of practice. And if someone's not reading for pleasure on their own time, as you said, they're not getting those opportunities for practice.
Apprenticeships where never for unskilled low archivers at school for example where I lived in the UK if you left school with poor results you didn't get an apprenticeships with the local engineering firms or the government - you worked in the brick pits for LBC
I think the issue is that we haven't yet demonstrated that real, actual equal opportunity won't lead to entire graduating classes of engineers and scientists - we still have the situation where "well Billy had to move schools 13 times because his family kept getting evicted, so while he might have been smart it's the brick pits for him, just look at his grades."
Probably not. Whenever wages go up enough, companies find ways to automate manual jobs.
On Market St in SF, I just walked by a cafe featuring a robot barista. Doesn't somebody have to make my latte? Turns out the answer is no.
Which is why my home town has the one of the highest diversity's in the world compared to its population.
The few "shop" classes we had were usually the ones where they actually got decent grades.
Past a certain age, there are no interesting things to read that are also readable for a person with weak skills. You won't find a romance novel with a vocabulary like The Cat and the Hat.
Correcting the problem is not cost-effective for a school. I did it once, for a 14-year-old I cared about. I had him read college-level science textbooks out loud. At first, I had to correct him every few words, repeatedly explaining phonetical rules and insisting on proper phrasing. ("You just blew past that comma.", or "There was no comma or period. Try again.") This tedious routine went on for several chapters. No normal school will do that for a child.
That being said, I teach English and thus have rare, direct knowledge regarding the situation. Pretty much anyone who doesn't read, at least somewhat, for pleasure (or on their own time) won't develop good reading skills: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/24/twilight-of-the....
IMO, too many students who dislike school and abstract symbol manipulation are funneled into college, where they fail or barely succeed (https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz...). We should be working towards more apprenticeship programs: http://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-boost... that are both congruent with the labor market and with student interests.
Attempting to teach in an era of "college for all!" has shown me many of the shortcomings in that program.