This Month's Cause: Literacy

In honor of the start of the school year, I've decided to highlight literacy this month (and through the end of September).

Literacy, the ability to read and write, is critical to finding and keeping a job, to maintaining one's home, to staying healthy, and to raising educated children. Low literacy levels correlate with high poverty, as poverty traps families in a cycle of stressors that interfere with successes, and low literacy prevents families from raising themselves out of poverty.

In the District of Columbia, the facts are pretty dire.  Although data are not recent, various compilations of statistics found online point to a rate of functional illiteracy that is higher than one-third of the population.  Public school outcomes on standardized tests, though improving, still show dismal rates of proficiency.  The District of Columbia Public Schools touted their impressive gains in this press release, which nevertheless admits the truth that fewer than half of all DCPS students are proficient in reading.  (NB: I have selected DCPS students to comment on simply due to the ease of finding consolidated data.  This is neither to overlook nor to imply any comment on charter schools or their students' performance.  For specific school scores on District of Columbia standardized testing, you may refer to the NCLB Data Reports site.) 

The good news, however, is that there are many, many individuals and organizations committed to helping District residents to improve their literacy skills.  Throughout this month, I will introduce you to some of these organizations. 

As always, if you have an organization that you would like to be promoted this month (whether in DC or elsewhere), an individual who is doing good work in the area of literacy, or if you would like to guest blog, please comment or send me an email.