The case for more coverage of Black kids’ literacy levels.
By Colette Coleman
In the 1820s, most Southern states outlawed teaching African Americans to read after abolitionist texts led to enslaved people’s resistance. Subsequent low literacy levels among Blacks in the antebellum South weren’t newsworthy. The fact that they persist today is.
In 2019, The Nation’s Report Card from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that just 15% of Black 8th graders were at or above reading “proficiency.” About half didn’t even reach the “basic” reading benchmark. Last week, NAEP released its latest results for high school seniors’ literacy. They’re not much better. Only 17% of Black 12th graders hit “proficiency.” As a woman of color and former Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) middle-school teacher, I’m enraged about these statistics and how our education system is failing Black children. I’m also concerned that so few media outlets are talking about it.
As society works to dismantle anti-Black racism, journalists’ increased coverage of African American students’ reading crisis is crucial. Only then can we build awareness and pressure for change.
As society works to dismantle anti-Black racism, journalists’ increased coverage of African American students’ reading crisis is crucial.
There’s strong coverage of the negative biases that African American students face in their education. Seattle Times education reporter Hannah Furfaro’s piece, “To understand structural racism, look to our schools,” is one example. The New York Times’ coverage of school segregation and distance-learning inequity is another. But these pieces speak more generally about achievement gaps, hardships during recent school closures, and racism in schools. What’s missing is ample reading-specific coverage of Black students’ experiences.
Literacy needs its own focus because reading is the gatekeeper to functioning and succeeding academically, professionally, and civically. It “underlies access to virtually all knowledge,” says Natalie Wexler in an interview. Wexler is an education journalist and author of The Knowledge Gap. As a math and science teacher in LAUSD, I saw literacy’s gatekeeping abilities firsthand. Smart students who were poor readers were blocked even from STEM content because the main mode of transmission was through the written word.
Valerie Kinloch understands the value of literacy, especially for Black students. “It’s important for kids, and especially Black kids, Latinx kids, and other kids of color, to have a higher reading and writing proficiency,” says Kinloch, the dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education and vice president of the National Council of Teachers of English. “It’s connected to what they can then go off and do in every other area.”
“It’s important for kids, and especially Black kids, Latinx kids, and other kids of color, to have a higher reading and writing proficiency,” says Valerie Kinloch.
Where does this leave the 85% of Black students who aren’t proficient? And how did we get here? These questions remain largely unexplored, though occasionally the media notices just how poorly schools are doing to equip African American kids with literacy skills. In late April, a groundbreaking court case was a chance for reporters to dive deep into this narrative. Students from Detroit, the American city with the highest percentage of Black residents, alleged the state violated their constitutional rights by failing to provide an adequate education, including basic literacy skills. The federal appeals court agreed, and many mainstream media outlets wrote about this breaking news. I had hoped this would be a tipping point that would lead to the critical mass of Black literacy coverage needed to start a movement for change. It wasn’t. The story stopped there.
Journalists need to report on such cases and on NAEP results, but they should also investigate the underlying causes and potential solutions of this long-term problem. Emily Hanford, a senior correspondent at American Public Media, has an idea about why many don’t. “Every time those NAEP scores come out, there are headlines about how shocked we are and how little the test scores have moved, and there’s a certain kind of coverage of it,” she says in an interview. “But I think what’s happened in school and maybe among journalists and among policy makers, and sort of as a nation, is, in a weird way, we’ve kind of come to accept it.”
There are articles that move beyond just the sad Black literacy stats. Lauren Camera’s 2015 U.S. News & World Report article “African-American Students Lagging Far Behind” and Wexler’s recent Forbes piece “How ‘Reading Instruction’ Fails Black And Brown Children” are two examples. They detail the NAEP scores, the difference between Black and white students’ literacy levels, and profile solutions to decrease them. Hanford’s recent “What the Words Say” focuses on children of color and sheds light on many issues disproportionately impacting Black kids.
Journalists need to report on such cases and on NAEP results, but they should also investigate the underlying causes and potential solutions of this long-term problem.
Educators and Black students would benefit from more journalistic probes like these. Kinloch says reporters should take an expansive approach that includes “larger conversations about educational inequities that impact Black kids and Black youth within schooling environments.” These stories could investigate less obvious causes of racial reading discrepancies. For example, does learning to read in the absence of culturally relevant texts impact literacy skills? Why do Black boys have the lowest literacy rates of all groups? How does excessive policing of Black students, starting in early elementary school, impact the development of foundational reading skills?
It has been tough to get reporters interested in starting such dialogues on literacy, since few Americans are discussing these topics. “Journalists tend to cover what people are talking about,” says Wexler.
Fortunately, the willingness and demand to explore issues impacting African American communities are increasing with the proliferation of the Black Lives Matter and anti-racism movements. But challenges to literacy coverage remain. Namely, there are still misconceptions about whether tackling this enduring reading problem is worth it. Many reporters may think, “This is a huge problem, but there’s not much that we can do about it because it’s been a problem for so long, and we spent billions of dollars trying to fix it,” Hanford says. “What was surprising to me as a journalist was to realize, no, there’s actually a lot of research that shows that this does not have to be the case.”
Much of Hanford’s work focuses on the different approaches to literacy in classrooms, highlighting the ample research on “the science of reading,” and discussing when and how to teach phonics.
The pandemic has brought unprecedented issues in education. They deserve coverage. But Black students’ literacy does, too, especially since virtual learning is only exacerbating an already dire situation. Studying the problem, discussing possible solutions, and, most importantly, raising awareness of the deficit that Black students face in gaining reading skills will help vault this topic into the public’s awareness and could lead the charge for sweeping fixes. And that’s important, because as James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Previous coverage:
The media blind spot hiding a big problem in American classrooms (Natalie Wexler)
Hard reporting: Why reading went under the radar for so long – and what one reporter is aiming to do about it (Emily Hanford)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Colette Coleman
Colette Coleman is a former classroom teacher now working as an education technology developer and writer. Her work focuses on education, inequity and literacy. You can reach her on Twitter @ColetteXColeman or on her website www.colettecoleman.me.
