How families are pushing schools to reading skills more effectively

 How families are pushing schools to reading skills more effectively

As an adult and throughout his childhood, Williams learned to compensate for his inability to read. For much of his life, preparing for a trip to the grocery store meant sitting down to sketch a list - not of words, but of drawings. "I literally had to draw a peanut and then some grapes. For example, the peanuts represent a jar of peanut butter; the grapes represent "getting grape jelly," she says. "I've learned to be a very good artist, so these are the gifts I've accumulated to survive. » Among adults, 1 in 5 Americans have low English literacy - most of whom were born here. About 8.5 million adults are functionally illiterate. Among children in the United States, only one-third of fourth and eighth graders are proficient readers. And the needle hasn't moved much in the last decade. Activists in Oakland, California, where Williams lives, have been pushing schools to focus on how students learn to read as a way to improve literacy. Members of the NAACP and an advocacy organization called Oakland REACH, launched by Oakland parents whose children attend the district's lowest-performing schools, have united around a campaign for better reading instruction they call Literacy for All. Williams is one of its most outspoken members
Struggles at school Williams grew up in Florida in a small town where racism and violence could be found even in his name, Perry, a Confederate Colonel. During a brutal series of lynchings in the 1920s, a white mob set fire to the city's school for black children. By the mid-1960s, when Williams began kindergarten, there was only one school for black children. The school district was so slow to desegregate that it lost federal funds in the late 1960s for violating the Civil Rights Act. It was a tense school environment that Williams said left scars. "The last thing we remember was this Caucasian woman coming in with a gun and threatening to kill us all. At that point they called us n *****s," said Williams. "We hid under the desk, locked in our rooms, terrified. » In the years that followed, his family settled down, following the whims of his father's military career. During those years, the school was a blur of teachers and classrooms across Florida, North Carolina and New York City, among others. The family finally landed in Oakland, where for years black leaders had demanded segregated school boards, protesting the concentration of resources in the mostly white hill schools. On the plains, where most black children attended school, teachers were less experienced, classrooms were crowded and supplies limited.
In1967, grade 6 students on the plains averaged two grades behind in reading. Students in hillside schools were above average. Black organizers were considering calling for a boycott of the school and threatening to create their own school board a few years before williams did. At the age of 11, she enrolled at Lockwood Elementary, a lowland school in East Oakland. She was still struggling to read and other children teased her about it. Hearing that laughter," says Williams, "traumatized me to the point where I was like, 'Oh, I'll never read out loud again. » She does not recall being tested for a learning disability, and the school district has no record of her assessment, perhaps in part because she had developed a strategy to avoid reading. "I got this anger because I see the other kids reading and I couldn't read, then they call me to read and I fight, the kids start laughing, so I stopped and got angry and threw a book or something," she said. She did everything she had to do to get sent to the principal's office. "I do things to get fired so no one will know," she said. The tantrums worked, but it was a vicious cycle. She acted because she was late and needed help, but instead of getting help, she was sent home. And at home there was no one to help. Her mother was busy working two jobs as a waitress and going to school to become a nurse. She was raising three children on her own, because Williams' father usually went to work. Williams did not have any help.