If you could not read in fourth grade, you are not alone. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in 2022, only 32% of fourth graders were reading at a NAEP Proficient level.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) brings literacy to top of mind during Black History Month, 2024. The NAACP nationally shared a free virtual screening of the film “Right to Read” on Feb. 1.
The film, with support of the NAACP, responds to the deficit of youth literacy in our nation. “Right to Read” delivers a perseverance message, galvanizing parents, educators, scientists, publishers, administrators and leaders to act.
“Right to Read” follows a group of childhood literacy experts, including Kareem Weaver who is a parent, teacher, principal and advocate of change. Working with the NAACP, Weaver approaches the Oakland, California, School Board with the mission to reshape the way kids learn to read.
Weaver believes that reading is our most important civil right. The film examines why our education system is failing us. The problem, when unpacked, is complicated and resistant to evolve.
Stuck in the corporate cycle of funding, many educational lessons are centered around teaching children to guess in response to visual cues.
The hope in this strategy is that through memory and repetition, the children will remember the visual significance of the letter groups and does not teach the phonological process of letters making sounds.
However, this strategy is falling short. Ultimately leaving young people, without the ability to pay for extra instruction, unprepared for the information age.
The curriculum leaves Sabrina Causey, first grade teacher in Oakland, desperate to reshape her first-grade curriculum.
Together, Weaver and Causey, bring Causey’s class a new approach to literacy learning which is a phonics and phenomics first approach. The approach connects letter sounds together, preparing students for lesson planned vocabularies.
The strategy provides an understanding of the relationships between letters as they come together to form words and as words come together to form narratives.
Literacy challenges, limitations, stigmas, and negative cycles cause misplaced confusion, self-doubt, and, too often, are a pipeline to prison, homelessness, unemployment and depression.
Despite these horrifying truths, there is resistance to act. Instead, elementary administrations often accept the status quo. This negative cycle continually wastes educator resources in the process of unlearning to relearn.
Weaver and his group of experts champion the topic of literacy by revealing a diverse set of perspectives. Perspectives include learner, educator, parent, scientist, corporation and politician.
The film from Jenny McKenzie and director, Lavar Burton, reveal how literacy gaps are socioeconomically segregated.
Their narrative unfolds a solution which connects pre-lessons phonics to competency. The strategy partners educators with learners in an effort to maintain our civil right of reading.