At one elementary school in California, 96 percent of the students are not proficient in either English or math.  How is that even possible?  Unfortunately, the more the federal government gets involved in education, the worse it seems to get.  At one time the United States had the greatest system of public education on the entire planet, but these days we only seem to make headlines when news comes out about how poorly we are doing.  This has been a hot button issue for me for a long time, but even I was surprised when I learned that the state of California is actually being sued because so few of their public school children can read…

A group of prominent lawyers representing teachers and students from poor performing schools sued California on Tuesday, arguing that the state has done nothing about a high number of schoolchildren who do not know how to read.

The advocacy law firm, Public Counsel, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court to demand the California Department of Education address its "literacy crisis." The state has not followed suggestions from its own report on the problem five years ago, the lawsuit said.

So exactly how bad is this "literacy crisis"?

Well, according to this lawsuit less than 50 percent of all third, fourth and fifth grade students in the state of California meet minimum standards for literacy…

English assessments found less than half of California students from third grade to fifth grade have met statewide literacy standards since 2015.Both traditional and charter schools are failing, Rosenbaum said.