Campaign Goal

This campaign seeks to provide the support and training educators need to succeed, as well as the needed student resources to ensure that all students are reading at grade level.

The Harm Caused by Under-Investing in Literacy

Young people in Oakland, California face dramatic inequity. 

Our students are not receiving the free and appropriate education they need to successfully navigate college, careers, societal institutions, or opportunities to be of service to the Oakland community. Our Black, Latino and Pacific Islander students in the Oakland Unified School District ("OUSD") are four times more likely to be reading multiple years below grade level than our white students (Figure 1). Without the ability to read, they are denied learning and denied the opportunity to identify, cultivate, and leverage their talents in whichever way they choose. The failure of OUSD to educate our students has resulted in reduced earning potential, racialized health disparities and communities vulnerable to gentrification.

Figure 1. Reading Inventory (SRI) scores of 3rd, 4th and 5th grade levels by ethnicity, 2019-20 (Fall). [1]

While 16% of white students are reading multiple years below grade level, over 60% of African American, Latino and Pacific Islander students are reading multiple years below grade level.

In the 2018-19 academic year, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) released the following data [2]:

• When it came to percent of 8th grade students who were ready for high school, 80.9% of African American male youth were assessed as not ready, while 47.7% of white male youth were assessed as not ready.

Research highlights the value of reading interventions at the first grade level, since if you don't close the gap early, the Matthew Effect takes hold. In the words of researcher Keith Stanovich, who wrote about the Matthew Effect, "Slow reading acquisition has cognitive, behavioral, and motivational consequences that slow the development of other cognitive skills and inhibit performance on many academic tasks."[3]

As this literacy gap widens over time, it robs students of future opportunities, impacts public safety and correlates to increased incarceration rates. The fact that 85 percent of America’s juvenile offenders have reading difficulties and that approximately 40 percent of America’s juvenile offenders at a 10th grade level read below a 4th grade level drives this point home. [4]

Moreover when it comes to juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system, statistics show [4]:

• 85% have reading difficulties.
• Approximately 40% at a 10th grade level read below a 4th grade level.
• Between 30% to 50% have learning disabilities.

Interventions Work
Research has shown that classroom instruction can "potentially help over 90 percent of early elementary students read on grade level, at least in terms of word reading ability; this percentage may increase to 97–99 percent when secondary intensive intervention is provided by experts. In fact, the central premise of Response to Intervention is that reading difficulties can be prevented for most children through well-implemented evidence-based early instruction and intervention. Contrast these percentages with rates of children whose reading comprehension scores are below basic on the fourth grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (33 percent on average, but up to 53 percent for Black students)." [5]

If Oakland values equity, it is clear that more literacy resources and support need to be directed to support (1) students earlier on in their public education, and (2) educators who support students with literacy.