The most important story in K-12 education is that a handful of states — and not the ones most expect — have figured out the tricky business of teaching kids to read. Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama have each bucked national trends by using a common approach and, in so doing, they have revealed the literacy playbook for even cash-strapped states in the Deep South. No excuses, California.
That story was everywhere last week, thanks to Kelsey Piper’s article here at The Argument, “Illiteracy is a policy choice.” In it, she took the media and elected officials to task for underplaying the trend. But the tide is swiftly turning: Last week, The Boston Globe declared that “New England Schools Are Failing” and that “the ‘Southern Surge’ should be a wake-up call.” The same day, Rahm Emanuel called for an “education reset,” saying these Southern state reforms should become “the meat and potatoes of Democrats’ education agenda.”
But not everyone sees these trends in the data as a path forward for pushing schools to take reading seriously. Freddie deBoer, the left leaning author of The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice, published a fervent critique of Kelsey’s piece on his Substack. He closed with a challenge. “We’ll see if The Argument, a magazine seemingly founded on the premise that liberal good vibes can overcome every inconvenient fact and complication, will engage with this kind of criticism.”
Challenge accepted.
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