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Tuberville joined Trump in saying the California governor should be arrested.
  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    English
    1·
    2 days ago

    Meanwhile, over here in California, kids are literate.

    California, shockingly, has the lowest literacy rate of any state

    “We really haven’t been investing” for decades, she said. “We’ve been underspending the entire time.”

    California, currently sitting on a surplus bigger than many states’ entire budgets, has for years spent less – about 13 percent less – than the national average on K-12 schools. Recent research shows that even high-performing California students score lower on standard tests than their counterparts in better performing states.

    School spending, of course, is only one factor shaping California’s dismal literacy rate. The state has the most diverse population in the country, more than 200 languages are spoken here. California also has the biggest wealth chasm.

    …

    Parental education might be the biggest factor. But income disparity – which is linked to parental education – plays a role as well. A big role. States with large percentages of highly literate parents unsurprisingly had highly proficient 8th graders, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

    Those states also had, among other things, more libraries per capita than the national average.

    California has the most public libraries of any state, with 1,130, said State Librarian Greg Lucas, but because of its huge population, the state falls below the per-capita national average. California has 4.5 libraries per 100,000, and the national average is 5.2.

    Lucas said public libraries help school kids who speak one of California’s 200-plus languages to find reading material, while also helping adults whose hopes of a better job require some level of literacy.

    …

    “There are stacks of studies that show that caregivers who talk, read and sing help build an appetite for reading. And there’s another big stack that says a kid succeeds better at a school with a teacher librarian,” he added.

    California, unfortunately, trails the pack on that measure, too. The state has about 900 teacher-librarians (credentialed teachers with a library sciences degree) for its more than 6 million school kids. Texas has around 4,300 such specialists and a million fewer kids.