It was bad before, and now…

In the spring of 2019, about half of California’s standardized test-eligible students could not read and about 60% of them could not do math, which, these days, also requires a fair amount of reading comprehension.

About two-thirds of California’s test-eligible Black students could not read in 2019 and 80% of them could not do math. What about Hispanic or Latino students?

They performed slightly better than Black students, though the numbers were still dismal. Sixty percent of test-eligible Hispanic or Latino students couldn’t read and 62% could not do math.

This is an unfortunate problem, but it has also alway been a workable problem with concrete solutions around teacher preparation and education, teacher pay, school facilities and resources, and parent involvement.