Vice President Kamala Harris wants the rest of the United States to become more like her home state of California. That is why, when she was a senator, she would constantly tweet about how “California is leading the way” on issue after issue.
So let’s check in on how California is doing on teaching people to read English.
According to the nonpartisan analysts at World Population Review, California ranks dead last in adult literacy. That’s right — Mississippi (only the ninth-worst) has a higher adult literacy rate than California. Nearly 1 in 4 California adults (23.1%) lacks the ability to read and understand this sentence. In contrast, 95% of people in New Hampshire can read and write in English.
Why is California’s literacy so low?
It is not for lack of spending. California doesn’t have the highest per pupil spending in the nation (that honor belongs to New York at $25,139 per student annually) — it is in the middle of the pack at 18th overall, spending $14,035 per student.
Also, even though New York leads the league in per-student spending, its literacy rates are also nothing to brag about. It is second-to-last in English reading and writing proficiency, with 22.1% of adults unable to read or write.
So if it is not spending, then why are so many Californians illiterate?
“The state has the most diverse population in the country. More than 200 languages are spoken here,” said Capitol Weekly, a nonprofit organization in Sacramento. “And programs to teach English to children whose parents speak another language at home have shown little success. Only 10% of students in English acquisition programs display grade-level proficiency. That’s a significant problem in a state with 1 million English learners among a student population of about 6 million.”
So it turns out that there are costs to diversity, not just benefits. California has the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in the nation; New York and New Jersey are right behind at No. 2 and No. 3. Not coincidentally, all three states are in the bottom five for English literacy. Now maybe these immigrants can all read and write in their native tongue. We don’t have data on that unfortunately. But for a nation striving for a common culture where we can all debate and understand each other, having one quarter of the population who can’t read English is a big problem.
Californians and New Yorkers may pride themselves on their sanctuary cities and generous welfare benefits for immigrants. But the trade they are making results in a population in which almost 1 in 4 adults cannot read English.
