According to the lawsuit, filed with aid from the Public Counsel law firm, California lags far behind US national literacy levels.
"When it comes to literacy and the delivery of basic education, California is dragging down the nation," said Public Counsel lawyer Mark Rosenbaum, who sued the state along with the law firm Morrison & Foerster.
According to Rosenbaum, less than half of California students from third to fifth grade have met statewide literacy standards since 2015. And this poor overall average masks some truly dire results in specific areas: in a particularly egregious example cited by the lawsuit, the La Salle Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles has only eight of 179 students meeting literacy standards.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, David Moch, a former teacher at La Salle and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said he had to use kindergarten reading teaching tools on kids in third or even fifth grade.
"I chose to teach at La Salle because I wanted to help," he said. "Every day I was there, I witnessed students' lack of access to literacy."
One of the plaintiffs, an 11-year old girl, is said to have had only third grade reading skills when she entered fifth grade, yet she was given no meaningful help, the lawsuit says.
"We need citizens that can read. We need citizens that can vote," LA Times quotes Moch saying. "Once you get behind, if there's no intervention, there's no catching up. The level of the work is getting more intense and multiplied at every level."
The plaintiffs call for the state to create an accountability system that would allow it to monitor literacy levels. They also seek to establish a practice of screening students twice a year and implementing interventions based on proven education programs.
