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Creating a ‘Right to Literacy’ Won’t Ensure Children Learn to Read
Is recognizing a “right to literacy” the solution to improved reading outcomes in America?
Groups in at least three states think so. There are currently lawsuits in Michigan, New Mexico, and California seeking to establish that school districts have violated a student’s “right to literacy” by providing inadequate learning conditions and insufficient school funding. The “right to literacy,” they argue, requires better conditions and more funding.
Setting aside the supposed “right to literacy,” it’s understandable why these families are frustrated with the outcomes in their children’s assigned public schools.
According to the 2017 National Assessment of Education Progress, only 29 percent of California eighth-graders are at or above proficient in math, and 32 percent achieved that level in reading. Thirty-one percent of Michigan eighth-graders are proficient in math and 34 percent in reading. New Mexico scores even lower, with only 21 percent proficiency in math and 24 percent in reading.
Public schools are assigned based on ZIP code, and the process of transferring to a school outside of one’s zoned area can be very difficult.
As it stands, all 50 states have compulsory attendance laws, meaning every child is required to attend school between the ages of 6 and 17 (with ages slightly varying by state). In most states, children must attend their assigned school unless their parents have the ability to homeschool them or pay private school tuition—in addition to paying taxes to support the government-assigned schools.
Because school attendance is mandated, and because most children attend assigned public schools, any incentive for improvement on the part of the public system is mitigated.
This issue is particularly acute in the three states where these suits are underway. There are no private school-choice options (vouchers, tax credits, or education savings accounts) in California, New Mexico, or Michigan. Save for some charter school options, parents who cannot afford to pay twice for their child’s education are largely at the whim of the government-assigned public system.
The petitioners’ proposed solutions in the three states range from increasing funding and programs and making sure teachers are trained to teach the curriculum, to providing additional classroom resources and ensuring the conditions necessary for learning. Although the petitioners’ grievances are understandable, research shows that increased funding does not necessarily lead to improved educational outcomes, and the funding is sometimes even used fraudulently by school districts.
The solution is not more government intervention, mandates, or funding. The solution is allowing parents and families to leave failing schools, or any school that doesn’t meet their child’s learning needs.
There are a host of factors that go into student success. Putting parents in the driver’s seat when it comes to deciding how best to foster that success provides the best chance for maximizing a child’s life goals.
Empowering parents with the opportunity to enroll their child in a school of their choice, or utilizing their child’s state per-pupil funding to customize their child’s education in a way that best fits their needs through education savings accounts, is a far better means of ensuring students can access an effective education that is the right fit for them.
By giving funds to students and not schools, families will be empowered to choose the schools or education providers that best help their children—whether it’s in reading or any other subject.
Inventing a “right to literacy” is not what will make a difference in student learning. The best way to achieve an improvement is by empowering parents to choose how and where their children are educated.
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Asian-American Parents Join Forces to Fight for ‘Education Fairness’
About 100 parents, largely of Chinese-American descent, gathered on a recent Saturday afternoon inside an elementary school near Washington, D.C., to hear Heritage Foundation scholar Michael Gonzalez speak against racial preferences in school admissions.
Gonzalez, a senior fellow in the leading conservative think tank’s Davis Institute for International Studies who has written on the subject, delved into the roots of the affirmative action crisis that has frustrated many Asian-Americans for years.
He argued that affirmative action is the byproduct of the racial identity politics of the left.
“Merit is the antidote to racism,” Gonzalez said, to the applause of the crowd.
His audience at Farmland Elementary in Rockville, Maryland, is part of a growing wave of Chinese-American activism in the Montgomery County public school system.
These parents are concerned, even angry, because they suspect affirmative action prompted the Montgomery County Board of Education to overhaul admissions to its highly touted programs for gifted and talented students.
The school board decided in 2016 to change the way the school system selects students for gifted and talented programs.
Since then, the percentage of Asian-Americans enrolled in these programs has dropped by 20 percent, and parents say the changes may have to do with factors other than merit.
The July 7 meeting in Rockville was organized by the Association for Education Fairness, a new grassroots organization of Asian-Americans created to demand equal treatment in education. The group gained visibility in the Chinese-American community through WeChat, a social messaging platform.
“The school board claims that the admissions system is based entirely on data,” Eva Guo, lead organizer of the Association for Education Fairness, said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal.
But, Guo said, the school system “will not respond to parents’ requests for that data.”
The group’s founding comes at a critical point in Asian-Americans’ educational activism, after Asian-American students filed a lawsuit against Harvard University alleging that the school discriminates against them in admissions processes.
Many of those at the meeting voiced concerns with Harvard’s policies, drawing parallels between what they consider mistreatment in the Montgomery County school system and Harvard’s own racial balancing programs.
The school board consulted an outside company, Metis Associates, to help construct a revamped admissions program. In 2016, it advised the board to change standards and admissions procedures to narrow a racial education gap and reach desired diversity levels.
But, Guo said, it isn’t clear exactly what selection criteria the school board uses to determine how to reach these goals in admissions to gifted and talented programs.
The Association for Education Fairness contends the 2016 actions severely reduced the difficulty of the entrance exam, which allowed a greater range of students to achieve desired scores.
This allowed leaders of an admissions committee to decide who gets in based on a range of other factors, including socioeconomic status and the ability to speak languages other than English at home, the group argues.
“Our kids make so much effort to study for the test,” lamented one Asian-American parent at the event who has children in the county schools. “It’s all wasted under the new exam.”
Guo said she would like to see the Association for Education Fairness grow to the point that it can fight for the educational rights of all those unfairly treated across the country.
“The worst part is, they’re not even setting standards based on things we can change about ourselves,” said Liu Ruohong, an Asian-American mother who attended the meeting. “We’ve got to stand up for our children.”
Another mother at the event, who is white, told The Daily Signal: “I am deeply concerned about my highly able kid, whose academic needs are not met by the Montgomery County Public Schools’ regular curriculum.”
Guo describes her organization’s mission as “to promote and advocate education fairness for all who have the right for equality.”
She said she wants to connect with government agencies and think tanks, such as The Heritage Foundation, to achieve policy changes.
If the organization manages to roll back negative aspects of Montgomery County’s school admissions procedures, Guo said, she will target other school systems where racial balancing is happening.
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Hungary Bans Gender Studies From Universities
Hungary will ban gender studies programs in state-run universities, the Hungarian government announced this week.
The government's stance is that the programs have no tangible use and are based on "ideology rather than science," according to a report in Hungarian political magazine Heti Világgazdaság published Thursday.
Bence Rétvári, Secretary of State of Hungary's Ministry of Human Resources, explained the decision by arguing that, while university degrees must have a scientific groundwork to justify them, gender studies are more rooted in ideology than in science, likening the field of study to Marxist-Leninism in that, in his view, it should not be taught at a university-level.
A Hungarian government spokesman expanded on this thinking when he told Breitbart News that degrees in gender studies are simply not useful to Hungarian employers.
“There is no economic rationale for studies such as these,” he said. A degree in the field does not “furnish students with skills that can be readily and directly converted on the labour market," he added.
The spokesman said that gender studies programs are not sustainable for state-run universities, arguing that they "take away valuable resources from other programs, deteriorating the economic stability of universities.”
Only two universities in Hungary, the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (ELTE) and the Central European University (CEU), currently offer gender studies at the graduate level. At these universities, a total of 13 students enrolled in the offered programs this year.
Pointing to the minor demand for gender studies degrees among both Hungarian students and employers, the spokesman noted that government resources should not be wasted on such seemingly impractical university programs.
“State universities operated from public funds must take these factors into consideration since the purpose of these institutions of higher education is to meet genuine social and labour market needs," he said.
Marta Pardavi, -- co-chair at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights watchdog organization -- criticized the Hungarian government with an "#academicfreedom" hashtag.
Friday's news signals only the latest rejection of modern liberalism by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's authoritarian government.
Ever since first taking office as PM in 1998, Orban has driven a populist agenda that has pushed for a rejection of globalism and multiculturalism and has seen a repression of press freedom.
With his dismissal of European liberalism and federalism, Orban has often been compared to President Donald Trump, even earning the nickname "The Donald Trump of Europe" for himself.
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