Alabama shows how and how not to read

The good news is Alabama, long a cellar dweller when it comes to educational attainment, is becoming a model for improving childhood literacy. The bad news is the lawmakers in Montgomery are intent on restricting what books those kids can read.

This, as most of us learned in high school literature class, is what’s known as irony.

Last week, Bonnie Short of the Alabama Reading Initiative went to Washington and testified before a House Appropriations subcommittee on the success Alabama has had in improving students’ reading scores.

Alabama’s fourthgrade reading standing rose from 49th in 2019 to 34th in 2024.

The secret to Alabama’s success is no secret at all. It goes by the name “science of reading.” Mostly, it’s old-fashioned phonics backed up by teachers able deliver intensive support where needed. And it’s the same approach that has delivered similar success in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Deep South states that were once the butt of jokes now are examples of how to do education right. Mississippi’s transformation has been even more pronounced than Alabama’s.

“Mississippi went from being ranked the second-worst state in 2013 for fourth-grade reading to 21st in 2022,” according to a 2023 story on the “Mississippi miracle” by The Associated Press. “Louisiana and Alabama, meanwhile, were among only three states to see modest gains in fourthgrade reading during the pandemic, which saw massive learning setbacks in most other states.”

Yet while Alabama is making once unthinkable strides in improving childhood literacy, state lawmakers are continuing to politicize an invaluable local institution: the public library. The Alabama Senate this week approved a bill that would allow local library board members to be removed from their positions without cause by the government officials who appointed them.

Bill sponsor Sen. Chris Elliott, R-Josephine, says his proposal is not about librarians or books, but simply treating library board appointees like most other appointees in the state.

“They serve at the pleasure of the appointing authority,” Elliott said. Currently, there is no mechanism to remove members before their term expires, he’s said.

The bill, according to Alabama Daily News, says each library board member shall be appointed to a four-year term and shall serve at the pleasure of his or her respective appointing authority and may be removed at any time by a two-thirds vote of the appointing authority.

This is the third time Elliott as sponsored the bill, which has failed in previous legislative sessions. While he denies the connection, it cannot be mere coincidence that during this same period, the Legislature and the state library board have sought to micromanage local libraries — whether the local officials in those communities like it or not.

Mostly, the state’s efforts have sought to limit what books can be in children’s and young adult sections, targeting in particular anything with any sexual content or hints of “gender ideology.”

The unstated assumption by Montgomery’s micromanagement of local libraries is that is children happen to be exposed to something “objectionable,” they will be effectively brainwashed and turn against the values of their parents.

Of course, if reading actually worked like that, presumable wholesome, patriotic books would work the same way. But that’s not how reading works, as any of the state’s highly praised reading specialists could tell lawmakers, if they asked.