A new bill backed by the NAACP and educators aims to overhaul how reading is taught before another generation of Black kids is left behind.
Imagine a Black kid in California starting kindergarten this fall. They’re bright, curious, and, above all — excited about school. Their teacher may be nice enough but inexperienced or untrained in the science of reading. And by third grade, this child will likely be labeled “behind.”
By middle school, honors classes are out of the question. If this student graduates from high school, they enter a world where job applications, lease agreements, and even voting ballots are a struggle to understand. Years later, their own bright, curious child heads to kindergarten in another under-resourced classroom.
Only, this isn’t hypothetical. It’s an intergenerational reality. Education advocates say the fact that low-income Black K-12 students have the lowest reading proficiency in the state isn’t just a policy failure, it’s a civil rights issue, and it’s a crisis so entrenched that, at current rates, the state won’t close its racial literacy gap until 2070. This isn’t just a California problem, either. Standardized test scores nationwide show only 17% of Black fourth-graders are reading on grade level.
But a coalition of Golden State educators, civil rights leaders, and elected officials believe they have a solution.
#ReadingRevolution #CaliforniaEducation #LiteracyBoost
