IS WANTING A BETTER AMERICA REALLY ELITIST?

COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY

BY LUCY WARNER

DECEMBER 4, 2019

I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THE LOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR BUTTIGIEG’S STATEMENT ABOUT ELITISM IN THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE. THIS REMINDS ME OF A LARGE AND DARKLY FUNNY POSTER THAT WAS OUT WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE. IT HAS A PICTURE OF A MUSHROOM WITH THE CAPTION: “I MUST BE A MUSHROOM, BECAUSE THEY KEEP ME IN THE DARK AND FEED ME B***S***.”

THAT WAS DURING THE VIETNAM WAR, AND IN MANY WAYS WE’RE IN THE SAME SITUATION AGAIN NOW. THIS BUSINESS BUTTIGEAG IS PROMOTING ABOUT VALUING EDUCATION’S CONSTITUTING “ELITISM” IS SIMPLY RIDICULOUS, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE FINANCIALLY ENABLING YOUNG PEOPLE (OR OLDER PEOPLE EITHER, I ASSUME) TO IMPROVE THEIR WORK LIVES. SO MANY JOBS NOWADAYS ASK FOR COLLEGE TRAINING, WHETHER THE WORK REALLY NEEDS IT OR NOT. I HAVE ALWAYS HATED THAT, BUT I’VE MOVED ON NOW. THE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS MAY BE GONE OUT OF BUSINESS, BUT THE BENEFITS FOR WORKERS ARE USUALLY BETTER. THAT WAY OF THINKING ON MY PART IS LIVING IN THE PAST. I HAVE TO REMEMBER THAT LIFE WASN’T SO PERFECT WHEN I WAS YOUNG, EITHER.

WHAT BUSINESSES REALLY WANT, I BELIEVE, IS A PERSON WHO CAN SPELL, READ, WRITE, DO SOME MATH, TALK POLITELY TO THE PUBLIC, AS WELL AS MEETING A BETTER STANDARD IN GENERAL. THEY THINK THAT REQUIRING A COLLEGE DEGREE WILL PRODUCE THOSE THINGS. IN BUSINESSES, NOWADAYS, THEY DO NEED TECHNICALLY TRAINED PEOPLE FOR COMPUTERS, BUSINESS TRAINING FOR WORD PROCESSING OR BOOKKEEPING, ETC. AFTER THAT THERE ARE THE PROFESSIONS SUCH AS MEDICINE, ACCOUNTANTANCY AND LAW, AND ESPECIALLY NOWADAYS, SALES PEOPLE. IT IS NOW CALLED “MARKETING,” AND WILL GET YOU INTO THE MANAGEMENT LEVELS. I PERSONALLY DISLIKE DOING MOST SALES WORK, BY TELEPHONE IN PARTICULAR, BUT PEOPLE WHO HAVE A FACILE VOCAL ABILITY DO MAKE LOTS OF MONEY DOING IT, OR SO I HEAR. I SPENT A THIRD OR SO OF MY WORKLIFE IN PUBLIC AND COLLEGE LIBRARIES THOUGHT I AM NOT A LIBRARIAN, AND LOVED DOING IT.

YOU SHOULD NOTICE THAT BERNIE SANDERS DIDN’T SAY THAT HIS FREE COLLEGE SHOULD BE TAKEN AT ONE OF THE OUTRAGEOUSLY EXPENSIVE PRIVATE COLLEGES, BUT RATHER A STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT COLLEGE IF IT IS WELL-RESPECTED. MOST STATES HAVE SUCH A UNIVERSITY SYSTEM. ALL PEOPLE COMING OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL DO NEED SOME SORT OF SCHOOLING / TRAINING BEYOND K-12, HOWEVER, AND THOSE DO COST MONEY. WHAT I HATE TO HEAR ABOUT ARE THE “ONLINE UNIVERSITIES” WHO RAKE IN THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FROM PEOPLE WHO THINK THAT ONLINE DEGREE WILL BE WORTH MORE THAN THE PIECE OF PAPER IT IS WRITTEN ON.

ALL SCHOOLS THAT FIT THE FREE PUBLIC COLLEGE LABEL DO NEED TO BE ACCREDITED, WELL-STAFFED WITH QUALIFIED PROFESSORS AND MEDICAL FACILITIES, AND HAVE A BEAUTIFUL, SERENE CAMPUS. IF YOU’RE GOING FOR A FOUR-YEAR DEGREE, WHY SETTLE FOR LESS? THE WORD PUBLIC JUST MEANS THAT IT IS OWNED OR SPONSORED BY A GOVERNMENT BODY. ALL PRIVATE COLLEGES ARE MORE EXPENSIVE, AND EXCEPT FOR SOME PROFESSIONS, I HATE TO SEE THE EMPHASIS ON THE IVY LEAGUE COLLEGES THAT WE HAVE TODAY.  

IN MANY UNDERSERVED PARTS OF THE COUNTRY THERE ARE COMMUNITY COLLEGES AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS. BERNIE SAID THAT THOSE WOULD BE COVERED ALSO. IT IS TRUE, OF COURSE, THAT THE NAME WON’T HAVE THE SAME CASHET, BUT WITH PERSONAL EFFORT – STUDYING WILL ALWAYS BE NECESSARY – BECOMING A COMPETENT AND WISER PERSON WILL BE POSSIBLE. IN OTHER WORDS, COLLEGE IS ABOUT GETTING A BETTER JOB, YES, BUT IT IS ALSO ABOUT MUCH MORE. A STUDENT WHO DOES NOT COME OUT OF COLLEGE WITH A BROADER MIND AND A AND A MORE EMPATHETIC HEART HASN'T DONE WHAT HE OR SHE NEEDS TO DO. 

I DO BELIEVE FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE THAT A CLASSROOM SETTING IS USUALLY THE BEST WAY TO LEARN. JUST A BOOK AND A COMPUTER WOULD BE A LITTLE DEPRESSING TO ME, I THINK. I LIKE DISCUSSIONS. THEY HELP ME LEARN. ALSO, MOST PROFESSORS DON’T JUST STAND AT THE FRONT OF THE ROOM AND DRONE ON AND ON, AFTER WHICH THEY HAND OUT A TEST. THEY ANALYZE, SUMMARIZE, EXPLAIN, AND GIVE OUTSIDE INFORMATION, AND IF THEY ARE ANY GOOD THEY ENLIVEN THAT STUDENT’S IMAGINATION SO THAT HE OR SHE WILL COME TO LOVE LEARNING FOR ITS’ OWN SAKE.

ONE OF THE WORST PROBLEMS IN THIS COUNTRY IS THE PUSHING OF A LIE – LEARNING THAT IS NOT JOB-BASED IS WORTHLESS; THE ONLY GOOD REASON TO GET MORE EDUCATION IS TO MAKE MORE MONEY; THE ONLY WAY TO BECOME MORE ENLIGHTENED IS TO READ THE BIBLE MORE. THAT IS HERESY TO ME. WHAT WE HAVE TO DO IN FURTHERING OUR EDUCATION IS TO MANAGE TO GET PROFESSIONALLY IMPORTANT COURSES IN, WHILE SIPPING SOME OF THE EMOTIONAL THRILL OF FINDING OUT SOMETHING FASCINATING OR IMPORTANT THAT WE HADN’T KNOWN BEFORE. WHEN A STUDENT ENJOYS LEARNING HE OR SHE WILL CONTINUE TO LEARN THROUGHOUT LIFE, THUS BECOMING A BETTER CITIZEN.

MODERN RELIGION SOMETIMES PROMOTES THE IDEA THAT THE BIBLE AND MATTERS OF DOCTRINE ARE ALL THAT PEOPLE NEED. THAT JUST ISN’T TRUE. SPIRITUAL GROWTH AND EDUCATION ARE TWO FACES OF THE SAME THING, AND A VERY BIG PART OF THE FOUNDATION OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP. A GOOD CITIZEN WON’T MARCH THROUGH THE STREETS WITH A TORCH SHOUTING NAZI SLOGANS. HE WILL HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO. WE HAVE TO ASK OURSELVES IN THIS COUNTRY WHERE THE HECK THAT CHARLOTTESVILLE EVENT DID COME FROM. COULD IT BE US?

FINALLY, THERE IS THE PRIMARY ROLE OF EDUCATION, AS A SOURCE OF BROADER AND BETTER ETHICS AND LINKAGE WITH OTHER HUMANS OF ALL STATES OF LIFE, INCLUDING MINORITIES AND PEOPLE WHO COME FROM A LESSER LEVEL OF PERSONAL WEALTH. EDUCATION AT ITS’ BEST IS ALL OF THOSE THINGS. IS THAT ELITIST? NO, I’M SURE I’M CORRECT IN BELIEVING IT ISN’T. IT’S VERY PRACTICAL, IN FACT. WHO DO YOU WANT TO MEET ON A DARK STREET AT NIGHT, AN EDUCATED ONE OR AN UNEDUCATED ONE?

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/04/progressives-fire-back-buttigiegs-bad-faith-claim-tuition-free-college-proposals-are

Published on

Wednesday, December 04, 2019

byCommon Dreams

Progressives Fire Back at Buttigieg's 'Bad Faith' Claim That Tuition-Free College Proposals Are Elitist

"The type of attitude that Mayor Pete Buttigieg is exhibiting here is in fact elitist in itself."

byJulia Conley, staff writer

PHOTOGRAPH -- South Bend, Indiana mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, talks to the press after a Sunday morning service at Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina on December 1, 2019. (Photo: Logan Cyrus/AFP via Getty Images)

Progressives and supporters of tuition-free public college plans on Wednesday denounced South Bend, Indiana Mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg's recent claim that offering a free public college education furthered an "elitist" worldview.

At a campaign stop in South Carolina on Monday, Buttigieg told the press that plans to offer public college to all Americans tuition-free push a "narrative" that one must attend college to succeed in the United States.

"Where I come from, three out of four people don't have a college degree," the South Bend, Indiana mayor told NBC reporter Priscilla Thompson. "And if the message we're sending to them is that you need a college degree in order to get by in life, in order to prosper, in order to succeed, we're leaving most Americans out."

Buttigieg's communications adviser, Lis Smith, added on Twitter that the plans of Buttigieg's primary rivals, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), to make public college accessible to all Americans, represented "the height of elitism."

Several officials on Sanders's presidential campaign took issue with that characterization, noting that the senator's public college proposal explicitly included tuition-free trade school enrollment, which, like two- and four-year college, would be funded by a Wall Street speculation tax.

"Bernie's plan also explicitly eliminates existing trade school debt—and Buttigieg's plan does not," wrote Sanders speechwriter David Sirota in his newsletter, "Bern Notice," on Wednesday.

Sanders has long held the position that not all Americans may want to attend a two- or four-year college, campaign spokesman Mike Casca told the Huffington Post.

"In fact, technical colleges and trade schools can be essential to the lives of working class Americans," Casca said. "Unlike Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Bernie believes essentials should be guaranteed to all people—not just those who can afford it."

Warren would also include technical schools in her tuition-free college plan and would invest $20 billion in apprenticeship programs for people who do not attend college.

Both plans contrast with Buttigieg's proposal, which would offer free college tuition only to families making $100,000 or less annually. Subsidies would be offered to households making up to $150,000, but would not cover trade school enrollment.

As Common Dreams reported on Friday, Buttigieg has strived to portray Warren and Sanders as wanting middle-class families to fund the educations of wealthy Americans, an argument Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) rejected on Tuesday in an email to supporters.

Buttigieg "is focusing on the children of millionaires and billionaires who could pay for college anyway—even though that's an incredibly slim percentage of people who attend public college in the first place," Ocasio-Cortez wrote, adding that the mayor is engaging in "bad faith tactics."

"A combined household income of $100,000 isn't even 'children of millionaires' territory," the congresswoman, a supporter of Sanders, tweeted last week. "That's two parents making $50,000 each. Does that sound rich to you?"

Critics also condemned Buttigieg for suggesting that the three-quarters of South Bend residents who don't attend college make that choice based on their values or desires rather than barriers to secondary education, particularly financial ones.

"He seems unable to comprehend that many folks can't AFFORD college," Sirota tweeted.

A survey of low-income high school seniors and their college counselors in Illinois found that 79 percent of students who were not attending college after high school made that choice due to "financial constraints"—the number one reason cited. More than 40 percent of the students also said they couldn't attend college because they were obligated to financially support their families.

Another poll in 2015 by Edward Jones showed that 83 percent of Americans say they "cannot afford the expense of a college education."

Buttigieg's suggestion that his progressive opponents are wrong to suggest that students need a college education is also not rooted in the reality of many job-seekers' experiences, according to polling.

A 2017 study of 26 million job postings, conducted by Harvard Business School, found that following the 2006-2008 recession—during which many job-seekers were forced to take jobs they were vastly overqualified for—employers have practiced "degree inflation," demanding college degrees for jobs that previously wouldn't have required them.

"In a typical middle skills job title such as production worker supervisor, we found that 67 percent of the job postings required a bachelor's degree or higher; yet just 16 percent of workers already in that position held such a degree," wrote researcher Joseph Fuller at Forbes.

Sanders's senior adviser, Jeff Weaver, accused Buttigieg himself of exhibiting "elitism" in his latest argument against free public college.

"The type of attitude that Mayor Pete Buttigieg is exhibiting here is in fact elitist in itself," Weaver said. "The reason why people aren’t going to college is because not everybody can afford to go to college."

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/326995-census-more-americans-have-college-degrees-than-ever-before

Census: More Americans have college degrees than ever before

BY REID WILSON - 04/03/17 11:56 AM EDT

PHOTOGRAPH – HAPPY YOUNG PEOPLE IN THEIR CAPS AND GOWNS

© Getty Images

Just over a third of American adults have a four-year college degree, the highest level ever measured by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In a report released Monday, the Census Bureau said 33.4 percent of Americans 25 or older said they had completed a bachelor’s degree or higher. That’s a sharp rise from the 28 percent with a college degree a decade ago.

When the Census Bureau first asked respondents about their education levels, in 1940, just 4.6 percent said they had a four-year degree.

About a quarter of American adults, 26 percent, have a high school diploma. Another 21 percent have attained a bachelor’s degree, while 9.3 percent of adults over 25 have a master’s degree. Almost 2 percent of Americans have a doctoral degree, and 1.5 percent have earned a professional degree that requires study beyond a four-year bachelor’s course.

Younger Americans are more likely to have attained a four-year degree than older groups. Among Americans between the ages of 25 to 34, 37 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree. Among those 55 and older, just under 30 percent have a four-year degree.

And women are slightly more likely than men, by about half a percentage point, to have graduated from college.

Wide disparities in educational attainment still exist along racial lines, the Census shows. More than 37 percent of non-Hispanic white Americans have a college degree, while just 23 percent of African-Americans have reached the same level of formal education. Only 16.4 percent of Hispanic Americans have a college degree.

Still, the percentage of both African-Americans and Hispanic Americans who have attained a college degree has grown in recent years. Among African-Americans, college graduation has doubled since 1991. Among Hispanics, the number of college graduates has increased 60 percent in the last 20 years.

Asian Americans are most likely to have attained a college degree: More than half, 55.9 percent, have completed a four-year college program.

Higher education levels have strong correlations with higher average earnings, underscoring efforts in Congress and in state legislatures to increase access to college education for low-income and minority students. Adults with only a high school education earned an average of $35,615 in 2016, according to the Census figures. Those who had a college degree earned an average of $65,482 last year.

But college remains an unaffordable and unattainable goal for many Americans.

A March study by the Institute for Higher Education Policy found that students from low- and moderate-income households could afford to pay for just 1 to 5 percent of colleges in the United States. The group urged federal and state lawmakers to cut student costs by spending more on public institutions, and to expand access to student loan programs, such as the Pell Grant.

The Census data show the number of high school graduates is also increasing, across racial and gender lines. More than 89 percent of Americans reported achieving a high school education in 2016, up from 79 percent a quarter-century ago. Among blacks, the percentage of high school graduates is up to 87.1 percent, a 10-point increase in the last 18 years.

The percentage of Hispanic Americans with a high school diploma is up 10 points since 2004, though at 68.5 percent that number still lags well behind other races.

https://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/education-news-roundup/illiteracy-in-america/

EDUCATION NEWS

Crisis Point: The State of Literacy in America

By The Room 241 Team • March 5, 2018

The United States is facing a literacy crisis. Yes, crisis. It isn’t new, but its impacts upon our kids, our economy, and our society are far-reaching and expanding. How bad is it? Take a look at some numbers.

More than 30 million adults in the United States cannot read, write, or do basic math above a third-grade level. — ProLiteracy

Children whose parents have low literacy levels have a 72 percent chance of being at the lowest reading levels themselves. These children are more likely to get poor grades, display behavioral problems, have high absentee rates, repeat school years, or drop out. — National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

75 percent of state prison inmates did not complete high school or can be classified as low literate. — Rand Report: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education

Low literacy is said to be connected to over $230 billion a year in health care costs because almost half of Americans cannot read well enough to comprehend health information, incurring higher costs. — American Journal of Public Health

The history of American literacy

To truly understand the state of literacy in today’s United States, we need to go back to the beginning. Literacy has long been used as a method of social control and oppression. Throughout much of history, the ability to read was something only privileged, upper-class white men were allowed to learn. School wasn’t free like it is today. Education was provided to only a select few, and this preserved a class system that kept the poor powerless and the rich powerful—a practice, we’ll see later in this piece, that continues today.

According to the Smithsonian, after the slave revolt of 1831, all slave states except Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee passed laws that made it illegal to teach slaves to read and write. The Alabama Slave Code of 1833 included this following law: “Any person who shall attempt to teach any free person of color, or slave, to spell, read or write, shall upon conviction thereof by indictment, be fined in a sum of not less than two hundred fifty dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars.” That was a whole lot of money in 1833. Why were they so concerned about slaves learning to read? Because if slaves learned to read, they could access information. They could read newspapers. They could read books and understand their rights. They could organize and rise up against the institution of slavery. Slave owners wanted to keep their slaves uneducated and powerless because they understood that literacy represents power.

A prime example is former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass who learned the alphabet secretly as a child from his slave master’s wife, Sophia Auld. As a young adult, Douglass pursued learning on his own, secretly reading books and newspapers. He famously said that “once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

Schools + learning to read

In the 17th century, public schools existed in the New England states, but largely taught students about religion and family. It wasn’t until the 19th century that public schools truly focused on academics. In the South, public schools were slower to arrive. Rich people paid private tutors to educate their children in the southern states, relegating the poor to perpetual disenfranchisement. The main author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, created a bill in early Virginia (in the 1770s), titled “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge.” His bill proposed that public schools should be started in Virginia to teach basic “reading, writing, and common arithmetic” to “all the free children, male and female.”

This did not, however, include slaves. His bill was not passed, nor was any public school law in Virginia until decades later in 1796. The 19th and 20th centuries saw the most growth in education and popular literacy. We then saw steady increases in literacy rates until the 1980s—when rates began to dip slightly.

Female literacy

Women, too, were largely left out of education. Educating women simply was not a priority until the early 1900s and even then, women attending college was rare up until the 1960s. Early Americans often believed it was a waste to educate women past the basics since they would need to run a home and raise a family. Bard College’s Joel Perlmann and Boston College’s Dennis Shirley say that “half the women born around 1730 were illiterate.” Women might have been taught to read at home or in an early girls’ school, but they largely weren’t taught to write, and often didn’t have access to secondary school in the early American colonies and states.

Literacy as a social justice issue

Think about it: When someone cannot read, they are excluded from many of the things that allow us to be fully functional citizens with choices. Those who are illiterate can lack access to information, are excluded from making choices about their rights or government through voting, and have fewer opportunities for employment. Illiteracy keeps people trapped in a cycle of poverty and subjugation, limiting life choices and making it difficult to achieve social mobility. Literacy truly is power—power over one’s own life.

While today’s American public schools are compulsory and free to attend, and we now have things like television and the internet, reading still remains a critical pathway to freedom.

The achievement gap

In the United States, literacy rates vary greatly between racial and socio-economic groups. Even today, minorities are still oppressed by lower literacy levels. Literacy continues to be a mechanism of social control and oppression. On the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress 12th Grade Reading Level Assessment (2015), 46 percent of white students scored at or above proficient. Just 17 percent of black students and 25 percent of Latino students scored proficient. Females scored higher than males. In McKinsey & Company’s The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools, “Black and Latino students are roughly two to three years of learning behind White students of the same age.” McKinsey’s research showed that that the achievement gap can lead to “heavy and often tragic consequences, via lower earnings, poorer health and higher rates of incarceration.” This achievement gap becomes an opportunity gap, an economic gap, and a racial gap, which gets passed on generation to generation unless it’s disrupted.

The literacy crisis today

Comprehensive national literacy studies are not conducted annually, but the National Commission on Adult Literacy released its report in June 2008 naming several factors contributing to the nation’s literacy crisis. Minority and immigrant groups are growing in population, but remain low in educational achievement.

The report claims that 1 in 3 people in the U.S. drop out of high school and that 1 in 4 American families is low-income with parents who lack education and skills to improve their economic status. This maintains a cycle of poverty, affecting each new generation of children.

In addition, 1 in every 100 adults is in prison in the United States, and more than half of those inmates have low literacy skills. Lastly, language barriers resulting from increased immigration have contributed to lower literacy levels in modern America. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 41 percent of adult immigrants score at or below the lowest level of English literacy and 28 percent have not completed high school, limiting access to higher education, employment and increasing the likelihood of living in poverty.

What other studies are finding about literacy

In 2013, the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics released the results from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The PIACC provided an overview of proficiency in adult literacy, numeracy and problem-solving. In literacy, people born after 1980 in the U.S. scored lower than 15 of the 22 participating countries. Overall, U.S. adults aged 15-65 scored below the international average in all three categories— ranking near the very bottom in numeracy.

Other studies by testing agencies and literacy organizations confirm the widening literacy gap, the perpetuation of poverty and a resultant expanding unskilled workforce in the coming years—the economic, social, and health-related results of which could be dreadful for the United States as a developed nation. The NCAL report notes that the U.S. is less educated than it was a generation ago, and our growing levels of illiteracy will foster a downward slide in our ability to compete economically with other nations. McKinsey Research finds that education gaps have contributed more than recessions to trillions in GDP losses. Not to mention, a national abjection from the unending toxicity of racial divides built upon 300 years of oppression and antipathy.

Today we see these divides widening, and the impact will be immense as poverty, racism and achievement gaps continue to pass down to future generations. United Nations Special Rapporteur Mutuma Ruteere called poverty and racism “inextricably linked,” noting that “racial or ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected by poverty, and the lack of education, adequate housing, and health care transmits poverty from generation to generation and perpetuates racial prejudices and stereotypes in their regard.”

What we can do as educators

Literacy is an authentic and complex social justice issue as it determines many of the factors that contribute to a student’s future quality of life. As teachers across the U.S. will tell you, especially those in low-income areas, students are coming to their classrooms each year reading well below grade level.

There isn’t one magic solution to our nation’s literacy problem—mostly because its causes aren’t singular. However, good work is being done in communities across the country that we can learn from:

There are schools that prioritize literacy instruction all the way through from K to 12 (not just in the lower grades), ensuring that students graduate at or above grade level.

There are “Two Generation” programs that afford both children and their parents with education, job training, and community assistance.

There are language acquisition, adult learning, and job training programs for immigrants and workers in need that help elevate literacy and work skills and provide access to higher income and opportunities.

There are organizations and communities that work to provide books to schools and directly to families.

It’s these holistic approaches that address not only reading at the classroom level for students, but that acknowledge the contributing factors to illiteracy and achievement disparities.

The work we do every day as teachers is part of the solution to this crisis. The bottom line… keep working, educators. And the more multigenerational programs we can offer, and the most literacy instruction we provide throughout a child’s progression through school, the better the outcomes for our students, our communities, and our nation.

FOR MORE, GO TO: https://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/.