"The Right to Read" Documentary Screening
Reading: A Civil Right
The NAACP and NYC Public Schools are proud to host a film screening and panel conversation of "The Right to Read".
American reading levels have been far below grade-level for decades. In 2022, only one-third of children were reading at proficient levels. When a child doesn't learn to read, their chances of incarceration, homelessness, and high school dropout increase. That's why Oakland-based NAACP activist Kareem Weaver's message is clear: literacy is the greatest civil right of our time.
Directed by Jenny Mackenzie with LeVar Burton as an Executive Producer, this documentary reinforces the importance of literacy as a civil right and advances the growing movement to use evidence-based approaches to literacy instruction in classrooms across the U.S.
What good is winning the right to vote if we can't even read the ballot?
- Kareem Weaver, Oakland-based NAACP Activist
Save Your Seat
Learn the stories of an activist, a teacher, and two American families who fight to provide our youngest generation with the most foundational indicator of life-long success: the ability to read.
Fed up with the bleak reading scores in his own community, activist Kareem Weaver files an NAACP petition demanding change in Oakland schools' reading curricula. Working with Ms. Causey, a first-grade teacher in the lowest-performing school, the two go against district mandates to bring in evidence-based literacy tools to see if they can turn reading scores around.
View the Trailer
