21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can’t read.
Time for a Change.
The reality is that this statistic is one of the major issues that puts our nations youth into a risky situation. Graduation rates have more to do with unequal education opportunities than anything else. These ads in my opinion are made to garner support in pressuring law makers to close the “gap” that creates inequality in the education system. The town I went to high school in Long Island has a very large budget annually. The reason for this is because taxpayers money from the town I am from only goes to this one education district. What if these school districts that have a lot of money anyway, gave a mere fraction to a fund that dispersed money to school districts nationwide in need. These districts in need, need money in order to support programs that benefit their students. Whether it is after school tutoring or sports teams, these extracurricular activities are vital in keeping a teens mind focused on their respective priorities. I think the intended audience of the ad are those people who are disenfranchised by the fact they do not have the means necessary as a community to improve literacy and graduation rates. The purpose of the advertisement is to bring hindsight to the fact that people are not able to achieve their full potential without an education. The way to end this issue is by expanding access and resources towards education especially in low income communities because their the most vulnerable to this reality. My stance is that I believe that all people deserve the chance to have an education and I do not believe the federal government is doing enough to help on the local level in order to improve education.
The people that this ad is intended for is not only the ones who are disenfranchised by being born into a low income situation, but those with money. In a process like such, improving literacy rates start with dispersing funding across all levels of income, budgets should not be voted on by members of the community, they should be set by the median income of that district, that way those parents, who send their kids to private schools, that would normally vote for a lower budget since they do not send their kids to public school. This exposes another reality, public schools are losing money to private schools in a big way. For example, last year in my hometown there was a vote to increase the Great Neck Public Schools 2018 budget. In an attempt to suppress the success of this initiative, religious members of the community who send their kids to private schools took action. They went around the towns stores, deli’s even bagel stores, any place that sold a local newspaper they went in and bought them all. This was all in an effort to block the budget from passing so they would not face the project 1% tax increase that was due to come in as a result. This attempt failed and the budget passed, but this is a prime example of how the private school community is prying students and money away from public education in the name of profit. Moreover, Senate need to do there part in suppressing the efforts of President Trumps agenda to cut taxes placed on charter schools. This tax is aimed to alleviate the federal taxing of private schools in order for them to lower their tuition rate in order to increase enrollment. Rolling these taxes back will only take more money from the funding that goes into the public (education) sector. The reality is that this issue between Trump and Private Schools, is in the hands of rich people and the ultimate losers are those are that poor.
If I had to have this ad be displayed in a place it would be Forbes or Bloomberg, yes the obvious choice would be Scholastic magazine or some educational platform, however, as much as we want to believe that this is an issue of people not wanting to learn how to read, it is more of an issue of children not having an issue to books. A child could have a book and choose to not read it, this is much different than a child sitting with no book unable to read the writing on the wall in front of him. Forbes or Bloomberg would be ideal places because they’re financial magazines, because of this more people connected to money and politics will come across this ad, my belief is that the businessmen of the world do not realize how bad this issue is, and politicians simply do not care. Both realities are the reason so many low income public school students are disenfranchised and unable to read or graduate high school.