Educators hope 'abysmal' national literacy rates will be addressed now that DEI, gender ideology out the door
A former Democratic lawmaker is spearheading the effort to improve children's reading skills
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}FIRST ON FOX: A Texas-driven campaign to tackle children’s "abysmal" literacy rates over recent decades is hoping to go national, as President Donald Trump rolls back DEI initiatives and curbs progressive gender ideology that has taken center stage in recent years.
"Literacy has taken a backseat, and it's because people don't know our kids can't read," said Pete Geren, former secretary of the Army and a former Democratic congressman from Texas. "I make a lot of public presentations. I meet with elected officials, state reps, who you know it's really a state issue. They have no awareness of this."
At Grade Level, a Texas-based organization behind the "Have Your Child Read to You" campaign, is partnering with Geren – a former congressman from the '90s and now president and CEO of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation – who is a well-known advocate for public education.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}RED STATES GET IN LINE WITH TRUMP'S DEI BAN IN SCHOOLS AS COMPLIANCE DEADLINE NEARS
President Donald Trump signs an executive order to reduce the size and scope of the Education Department alongside school children signing their own versions, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on March 20, 2025. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
"The federal government has told us over and over and over that most of our kids cannot read proficiently, and it has never led to a literacy movement in this country," Geren said.
Geren and At Grade Level are urging parents to do a simple task: ask their children to read out loud to them to see if they are learning proficiently in school.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Only 43% of more than 170,000 students are reading at proficient grade level, according to state test scores in Fort Worth, and close to 100% of parents believe their children can read at grade level. The numbers on a national scale show a similar trend.
New Jersey is now requiring all students in grades K-12 to be taught "media literacy." (iStock)
"It's our goal to build awareness," Geren said. "The missing link in the political movement is the parents… if they know, everything will change. Parents will do anything for their kids, and they'll fix this problem at home and at the governmental level."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Reading proficiency among eighth graders dropped to 67%, the lowest in 32 years, while only 60% of fourth graders met basic reading standards, according to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Only 67% of eighth-graders met or exceeded basic reading skills on the 2024 NAEP exam, down 2 percentage points from 1992 when the testing began. The NAEP, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, is the gold standard for measuring student academic performance.
And poor literacy rates are closely tied to crime, according to At Grade Level, reporting that approximately 80% of Texas prison inmates are functionally illiterate.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"We've got the district attorney, we've got the county judge, and so many leaders coming out because of the connection to crime," Geren said.
An Atlanta student uses a bookmark to follow along as the class reads during an after-school literacy program on April 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, File)
In February, Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes said at a press conference that the statistics "paint a stark, tragic picture of our present situation, but that doesn’t have to be our future."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Many of the people incarcerated right now are there, in part, because of that lack of proper literacy levels that they did not receive when they were young," Noakes said.
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Trump signed executive orders to eliminate DEI programs and gender ideology instruction in K-12 schools in January. Two months later, he moved to significantly downsize the Department of Education to shift more control over education back to the states.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}While downsizing the department, Trump criticized the billions of dollars funneled into the public education system while students’ test scores in core subjects have continued to plummet.
"We want great education. So they rank 40 countries in education, we’re ranked dead last, but the good news is we’re number one in one category. You know what that is? Cost per pupil," Trump told Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy at a press conference in February. "We spend more per pupil than any other country in the world."
U.S. federal, state and local governments collectively spend about $857.2 billion annually on K-12 public education. Despite a record $190 billion in federal aid since the pandemic, students' academic performance has seen little improvement. An analysis by The New York Times in March found that, since the pandemic, students have fallen behind by more than half a year in math and also struggled in reading and science.