Key Legal Documents
Literacy is essential to giving children access to all other academic skills and subject areas. Experts agree that literacy instruction must begin in the earliest grades and continue through middle and high school. Students not only must develop the skill of decoding letters and words, but also must develop the ability to comprehend, compose, and synthesize knowledge.
This case, filed in Los Angeles by Public Counsel and Morrison Foerster, on behalf of 10 students from three different schools, and advocacy organizations CADRE and Fathers & Families of San Joaquin, demands that the State of California ensure that all California students receive evidence-based literacy instruction at the elementary and secondary level, along with the conditions necessary to support learning and teaching (a stable, supported, and trained teaching force; opportunities for parental engagement in literacy education; and school conditions that promote readiness for learning). The lawsuit claims that the state has violated the fundamental right to education of these children, who are mostly low-income and students of color, by requiring them to attend school yet depriving them of access to the most fundamental educational building block: literacy.
Key documents include: