Reversing slide in literacy should be societal priority

There is no more potent, relevant, necessary skill for a child than learning to read. If you agree, you should know that we are in the process of failing a generation of Californians.

Last year, state testing suggested half of all students — and 65 percent of low-income students of color — were reading below grade level. Locally, our numbers sadly mirrored the statewide totals: 56 percent of Cabrillo Unified students failed to meet English-language standards; 47 percent of Pacifica School District students failed to meet the standard. Both local school districts saw a drop after the pandemic disruption of in-school education.

As if that isn’t dire enough, recent reporting suggests California — not Mississippi, Alabama or some other state that West Coast residents routinely mock — has the lowest literacy rate of any state in the country. Last year, Capitol Weekly reported that 23 percent of California adults are effectively illiterate.

A yearslong decline in reading levels of young children will translate into less literate adults and that has incalculable ramifications for the electorate, for employers, for us all.

There are things about California that make it, if not unique, a particularly challenging place to teach English literacy. For starters, dozens of languages are spoken across the state. It also spends less per capita on a child’s education — about 13 percent less than average.

Not depressed yet? A group called the California Reading Coalition has put together an interesting ranking of the state’s larger school districts. It focuses on the performance of Latino third-graders, accurately deducing that if the district is successfully engaging these students as readers then it is likely getting through to other, often less challenging, populations.

Perhaps surprisingly, none of the 30 top-performing districts in the coalition rankings are in the Bay Area — not even heralded (and rich) districts in Silicon Valley. Coastside school districts were not included in the survey, presumably because they didn’t have enough Latino third-graders to make the results meaningful.

A nation that cannot read will not succeed. It’s as simple as that.

The Center for American Progress notes that America’s literacy slide has actually been decades in the making and was only made worse by school closures during the pandemic. It suggests large public and private investments in readership initiatives and teachers trained in the science of reading in every classroom. If that sounds expensive, consider not doing so. The center listed the wide-ranging consequences of an illiterate nation: more political disinformation, suppressed gross national product, greater dependency on welfare and even more incarceration.

There is another byproduct of reading worth mentioning: empathy. Curious readers are bound to find common cause with other people, whether they are reading a news story about a fallen tree in La Honda or a novel set in some foreign land. Literacy connects us in that way. And that is priceless.