Many California schools get a failing grade on teaching reading, report finds

Many California school districts get a failing grade on how well they teach reading, according to a new report from the California Reading Coalition, a literacy advocacy group.

In this statewide ranking of 287 districts, the Bay Area is home to nearly half of the lowest performers, including San Francisco Unified, Oakland Unified, and West Contra Costa Unified. Southern California, meanwhile, has 80% of the high performers, including Los Angeles County. Fresno County also stands out, with four of the top 30 districts. Overall, half of California students do not read at grade level, according to the report, which threatens to widen the achievement gap. 

“The reading results in California are alarming,” said Todd Collins, one of the organizers of the California Reading Coalition. “We need communities and school districts to wake up to this problem and make it a top priority. Few school boards or superintendents spend time and energy on early literacy — that’s got to change. When you see how badly your schools are doing, it should move you to action.”

The Bay Area did not get great grades. Four districts in the bottom ten of the ranking are located in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, the core of Silicon Valley, based on third-grade reading performance. Meanwhile, half of the districts in the top ten are located in Los Angeles County. The 287 districts surveyed, which serve 72% of all students in California, were chosen to include a diverse population of students in terms of race and income. 

“The very low performance of Bay Area districts is striking. We far underperform the state in general, and Los Angeles County in particular,” Collins said. “We need to figure out why and change how we do things. As a school board member in Santa Clara County (whose own district is in the bottom 10% of the rankings), I feel a real urgency around this.”

Reading is often considered a gateway skill that leads the way to more complex academic pursuits. By third grade, students are expected to pivot from learning to read to reading to learn. If they fall behind in making that transition, it can be hard to catch up. 

“If kids can’t read effectively by third grade, they will almost certainly struggle for the rest of school, we’ve failed them,” Collins said. “Literacy is the foundation of any program for social justice or economic growth and we’re not building the foundation we need. We ignore this problem at our peril.”