{"id":18451,"date":"2016-11-30T11:41:34","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T11:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/?p=18451"},"modified":"2016-11-30T11:41:34","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T11:41:34","slug":"whats-going-take","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/whats-going-take\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s it going to take?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was scrolling through my twitter timeline back in 2011 while living in SoCal, and came across a huffpost article titled, \u201cNearly Half of Detroit\u2019s Adults Are Functionally Illiterate, Report Finds.<\/a>\u201d I was unaware of the state of education and any related matters at this point in my life, so I was completely taken by surprise. Although the 47% statistic has been explained<\/a>, it was a real statistic from the late 90s. Even with a 5% margin for error, the range of 42%-52% is still alarming to me. We\u2019re in America, how could someone grow up without learning how to read?! Is reading a right?<\/a><\/p>\n

Fast forward to when I began working for a literacy organization in Detroit that worked with elementary to middle school kids… As I received individual assessment results that determined whether or not a student was reading at grade level, reality was starting to set in; most students were reading at least one grade level behind, while some performed much lower. While I was saddened, I was also hopeful that we would be able to help these students. Many did show improvement thanks to daily, one-on-one tutoring.<\/p>\n

A year later, while doing research for a proposal, I came across some data (I can\u2019t remember exactly what it was called) from the 70s that seemed to mirror what I read in that huffpost article. I thought to myself, \u201cIt\u2019s been over 30 years, why are these literacy rates still the same?!\u201d<\/p>\n

Fast forward to now. Again, doing research for a proposal.\u00a0 The National Center for Education Statistics (National Assessment of Education Progress, Trial Urban District Assessment, 2015 Reading Results for 4th & 8th Grade<\/em>) states that in 2013 only 30% of 4th<\/sup> graders and 46% of 8th<\/sup> graders in Detroit public schools were proficient in reading. In 2015 those figures dropped to 27% and 44% respectively. According to the 2014 ACT results, 36% of Michigan students, and only 14.7% of Detroit students were proficient in grade-level reading. The 2015 SAT results reflected the same trend, with only 34% of Michigan students, and only 13.1% of Detroit students meeting the benchmark for reading proficiency.<\/p>\n

How are students matriculating without being proficient in reading? Reading is the foundation of education right? How are schools expected\u00a0to reach their objectives when their students can\u2019t read well?<\/p>\n

I know now that there are many factors that affect a child\u2019s reading abilities; many that teachers and the educational system have no control over. There are many that have been working tirelessly to alleviate this symptom of underlying causes, but I wonder what it\u2019s going to take until WE ALL\u00a0do more than just look at statistics in disbelief.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cYou

\u201cYou don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.\u201d – Ray Bradbury<\/p><\/div>\n

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I was scrolling through my twitter timeline back in 2011 while living in SoCal, and came across a huffpost article titled, \u201cNearly Half of Detroit\u2019s Adults Are Functionally Illiterate, Report Finds.\u201d I was unaware of the state of education and any related matters at this point in my life, so I was completely taken by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}