Literacy: The Classified Commodity

By Adynah Johnson

May 7th, 2019

Clyde Woodworth Scholars spent their Saturday building lego cars and structures, making robots, making racing cars, playing
robot football, looking and learning about robots and drones. May 2017 (woodworth.myiusd.net)

To define literacy plainly, it is the ability to read and write. But it is also a function that
is somewhat elusive to those who do not engage in the world of academia. With the educational
system in this country hanging on the precipice of profound change, could it be that literacy may
still be the greatest commodity in the modern world? Could we be looking at another great divide
of the literacy have’s and the have’s nots? The answer may just lie in the hallways of California
public schools.

We cannot discuss literacy in the state California without mentioning the independent LA
charters, which make up the majority of the 277 charter schools in LA and roughly 138,000
LAUSD students. Public education is one of the last vestiges in this country that hasn’t been
completely privatized. About ninety-one of students in the country still go to public schools, so
economically speaking, there’s huge potential for private businesses to swoop in and try to make
a profit. Every year, LAUSD loses $600 million to charters (Inouye, 2018). Think about the
immeasurable amount of educational inequity this is causing. A more conscious and holistic
perspective on education would consider its social benefits. Increasing literacy rates, for
example, leads to improved health outcomes, broader participation in democratic processes,
reduced crime and poverty rates, environmental sustainability and social equality (Riddle, 2014).
In fact, two of the top five most important items in last years International Literacy Associations
What’s Hot in Literacy Survey, were related to equity. This includes the topic of Equity in
Literacy Education as well as Access to Books and Content. Since equity is interwoven into all
things, addressing issues of equity in order to magnify the focus on literacy worldwide is
obligatory.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics 2017, at grade 4, the White-Black gap
in reading narrowed from 32 points in 1992 to 26 points in 2015; the White-Hispanic gap in
2015 (24 points) was not measurably different from the gap in 1992. Though on the surface the
narrowing of the reading achievement gap here, may be viewed as an accomplishment at any
rate, but the truth is a 6-point decrease in 23 years, in the richest nation in the world, is abysmal.
Children who are underserved, whose families are not capable of advocating for them, and who
are the most expensive to educate may be the only students left in traditional public schools if the
current trends to privatize continue. Empowering private interests at the expense of our more
vulnerable children may be the imminent outcome of the privatization movement, and it is
undermining the human and constitutional rights of children to a sound education (Inouye, 2018).
When education and literacy specifically are privatized and students who attend traditional
public schools are left educationally bankrupt, we start to see a continued system of oppression,
poverty and racial and economic divide.

Charter schools do not serve the same student populations; they are not required to admit all
students. A recent analysis shows that over the last ten years the number of racially and
economically isolated schools has increased, and charter schools tend to exacerbate segregation.
School segregation is correlated with increasing racial achievement gaps and lower graduation
rates (Inouye, 2018). Low-income children are left out of charters and private schools through
practices of exclusion which exclude students with disabilities by not offering services,
especially to students with more severe disabilities (Inouye, 2018). Observing first-hand as a
Paraprofessional, the stark contrast between working at the affluent charter school Canyon
Charter in Santa Monica, California with a student-body of predominantly White upper middle
class children and Clyde Woodworth Elementary, a public school in Inglewood attended by only
children of color and 67.3% ELLs, there is no question that the quality and level of effective
literacy instruction is grossly imbalanced.

The National Center for Education Statistics further quantifies the parallel between
literacy/reading and socioeconomic status. From 1992 through 2015, the average reading scores
for White 4th- and 8th-graders were higher than those of their Black and Hispanic peers. At
grade 12, the average 2015 reading scores for White (295) and Hispanic (276) students were not
measurably different from the scores in 2013 and 1992. For Black students, the 2015 average
score (266) was lower than the 1992 score (273). These statistics are yet another blatant
indication of the literacy and economic connection. As these numbers climb, we still fail to stop
the process of rapid school privatization and call out the ineffective instruction that serves to
keep underserved children stagnant — their very lives and economic futures lay in the balance.
We need to take immediate action towards student advocacy and use literacy as a meaningful
and powerful tool to expose and challenge poverty, and work towards social justice.
 References

International Literacy Association. (2018). What’s hot in literacy report. Newark, DE

Inouye, A. (2018). This is a Struggle to Save Public Education. Jacobinmag.com Retrieved from:

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/09/los-angeles-teachers-strike-education-reform

Musu-Gillette, L., de Brey, C., McFarland, J., Hussar, W., W., Sonnenberg, W., and Wilkinson

Flicker, S. (2017). Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2017

(NCES 2017-051). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education

Statistics. Washington, D.C.

Riddle, S. (2004, September 30). Education is a public good not a private commodity.

theconversation.com. Retrieved from: http://theconversation.com/education-is-a-public-

good-not-a-private-commodity-31408