California Sued by Students & Parents for Failing to Teach Literacy

AGENDA 21 RADIO

BY CHRISS STREET

A group of parents and students filed what they hope will be a landmark lawsuit against the State of California for its public school failing to teach literacy.

Public Counsel and the prestigious Law Firm of Morrison & Foerster sued the State of California, the State Board of Education, the State Department of Education, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson for their collective failure to provide every child in the state access to literacy as required under the California Constitution.

The lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of parents of students at 2 Los Angeles and one Stockton school, alleges it is an urgent civil rights crisis that California has the 3 worst-performing schools and 11 of the 26 worst-performing public school districts in the nation for the ability of students to read and write.

Based on the California’s testing standards, the suit states that “under-performing schools throughout California have student bodies consistently achieving less than 10 percent, and frequently less than 5 percent, proficiency in core subjects like reading and math.” To put the crisis in perspective, only 8 children out of the 179 students tested at Los Angeles’ La Salle Elementary were found to be proficient by state standards.

A Los Angeles Unified School District report from an attendance task force from an attendance task force found that 800,000 students, or about 1 out of every 7 enrolled student, was “chronically absent” for at least 15 days per year and at risk of dropping out.

Lead attorney Mark Rosenbaum stated that California has 13 percent of the worst performing U.S. school districts. He added: “Public education was intended as the ‘great equalizer’ in our democracy, enabling all children opportunity to pursue their dreams and better their circumstances. But in California it has become the ‘great unequalizer.”

Rosenbaum referred to the state’s own literacy experts’ report that concluded in 2012, “there is an urgent need to address the language and literacy development of California’s underserved populations…” Despite continuing concerns over the last five years, Rosenbaum argued that the state took no meaningful corrective actions.

During the next 5-year period following the grim literacy report, per student spending on California K-12 educational programs jumped by 66 percent, from $9,370 per student in 2012-2013 to $15,521 per student for the 2017-18 school year.

But concerted effort to improve student literacy was torpedoed in late 2015 by President Obama signing the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that required school evaluations to also include at least one “non-academic factor.” ESSA replaced the No Child Left Behind Act that relied on regular student testing for grade-level reading and math skills.

Unable or unwilling to improve literacy test scores, the California Board of Education in September of last year voted unanimously to undermine the testing by incorporating other non-academic factors in rating schools that include graduation rates, college preparedness and rates that non-native speakers are learning English.

Under the new educational evaluation system adopted by the Board of Education, each California schools will not get an overall literacy rating, but rather receive year to year comparative results for how they perform across categories of different student groups.

The Los Angeles Times called the vote the end of a long philosophical shift away from judging schools using only their test scores, “as more people agree that numbers alone can never capture the complexity of classrooms.”

1 thought on “California Sued by Students & Parents for Failing to Teach Literacy

  1. Well when your school districts are overrun with illegals this is what happens. The kids can’t speak English, had no formal training from where they came, and most are on welfare. I taught school in CA, in a Title 1 school where the majority of the kids were on welfare. Imagine the enrichment activities we could have if we weren’t spending money on Spanish language books, and teachers and welfare.

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