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Kristina: After reading this book, I have been exposed to the different factors that can create problems in literacy such as equity, politics, how illiteracy is a factor of socio-economic status, discrimination, racism, rights, and economic stratification impacting our school funding. The purpose of this book was to become more aware of these real issues that go on in schools that create the gap in students from different regions. Decisions I am going to make in my classroom based on these factors are to consider how to assign homework and communicate with families, understanding that students have different levels of access to resources like computers and the Internet; and prioritize consideration of the needs, challenges, and barriers experienced by students who are from marginalized groups in each discussion and each decision about classroom, school, or district policy and practice.
Monica: While reading Literacy in American Lives I couldn’t help but think how much the need of literacy has changed throughout time. This book emphasized how only certain people of a certain class was exposed to literature, the way African Americans were treated in literacy learning, literacy was “affiliated with a few strong cultural agents- education, religion, local commerce”. Overall, the theme that stood out to me more was the way people who had a different race of socioeconomic background were neglected. It’s unfortunate to say that this still happens today, however I won’t let it happen in my classroom. I already think society is hard on children today, they have to think a certain way in order to be successful, and if anything that’s something I won’t allow in my classroom. I know we will be faced with some difficult times, some teachers are placed at low income schools and have to make the best out of it because the funding isn’t great, which is another theme. This book helped me realize the dos and don’ts of literacy practice. I was able to see how much it has changed and how we are fortunate to have the technology we have now. We have learned that treating students based off their economic status or race is extremely inappropriate, and chapter four was a huge eye opener on how the students’ parents or grandparents have been treated and made me think that’s not how I would want them to be treated in my classroom. I refuse to let being placed at a low income school reflect on the kind of instruction I will give my students, I plan to be the strongest advocate they have ever had.
Marissa: Sadly, before reading this book I thought of literacy at surface level. I assumed that literacy in education was making sure that students have opportunities to read and write, but literacy in education is more than that. Literacy is affected by politics, socio-economic status, and stratification impacting our school funding. The fact that schools receive more money based on scores and geographic region, is infuriating and affects my future instructional decisions. If I am in a Title 1 school or schools that lack resources, I need to do more than just ask the principal for whatever I need. I need to be involved in making a change in ALL schools who face educational inequalities. Not only do I need to be an advocate for the students at my school but I need to be part of the change from an education system that is failing a large number of students. The more the education system is stratified the more likely it will have larger inequalities. Teaching is more than just lesson plans and activities. I need to be involved in organizations that I align with my teaching beliefs and work with the parents and community in making sure my students are set up to succeed.
Carolina: As I read the book Literacy in American Lives, there was a major theme that stood out to me. One theme being that there are children and parents who are unfortunate to receive and get access to literacy as other individuals. As a future educator, even if I am placed in a low funding school or a high funding school, I want to be able to give my students the best education I can offer to them. I want to teach them the skills they need to in order to become successful. I want to be able to open an after school program/club or offer resources to parents who are struggling with their students in literacy. Instead of depending on government funding we, as teachers need to come up with different opportunities for children to succeed in their own way and become successful in literacy.

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Monica's Video:

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Deborah Brandt - The challenge of a writing-based literacy

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Summary
Literacy in American Lives discusses the distinct conditions people who lived during 1890-1980 century learned how to read and write. Literacy in American Lives also examines the literacy histories of people that describe the effects of literacy during the 1900s, such as the political, sociocultural, and economics.
About the Author
- Deborah Brandt earned her B.A. from Rutgers University in 1974 and her Ph.D. from Indiana University Bloomington in 1983. - She worked for the

University of Wisconsin Madison until she retired in 2010.

- Literacy in American Lives earned her the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Education, as well as the

Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize from the Modern Language Association
- Was awarded the NAACP's W.E.B. DuBuois Advocate Award in 2001
- Was nominated twice for the

Madison Urban League's Martin Luther King Humanitarian Award in recognition of her work with Madison middle school students.

- Deborah Brandt’s research "focuses on the social contexts of mass literacy and literacy learning in the late 20th and early 21st century.”
-  She has a vision for mass literacy and says that everyday writing has come to be regulated differently from reading and is less protected by government.

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Kristina: The best activity that has helped me while I read, was making connections. We were suppose to read out designated chapter and find power quotes that we could make a connection to for us to have a better understanding on what the author was trying to get across. As I make connections to what I am learning, it helps me have a deeper understanding of new information I am trying to retrieve. Throughout this book, I had several connections but one quote made me have a strong connection and “aha” moment for this book. “Buying and selling involved many more people in recording, moving, and promoting information; readers became targets both as audiences for advertising and as purchasers of literacy-based commodities.” pg. 190. This quote stood out to me because I work for H-E-B and recently, we made a Mother’s Day commercial. The people had to read a short script to deliver the message. People who understand the message are those who are able to understand the English language. The “aha” moment for  me was how economic development was necessary to make literacy complete, it was so interesting to see how economics and literacy twined in together.
Monica: The activity that best deepened my understanding of this book was being able to choose power quotes and reflect on them. Through this activity I was able to choose a quote that truly spoke and reflected on the overall theme of the book. “Literacy in American Lives” is a book over several different Americans and the use of literacy or lack of literacy throughout their lives. Because my partners and I chose to do this activity at the start of the book, I came across a quote that related to the theme. “Unrelenting economic change has become the key motivator for schools, students, parents, states, and communities to raise expectations for literacy achievement.” This quote related to the socio-economic status being a factor of illiteracy in America’s theme.
Carolina:  The best activity that deepened my understanding of the book were the power quotes because as I was reading the book I came across quotes that related to the themes of the book, myself, other articles, and other points of views of literacy in different centuries. “Literacy takes on unusual status in an information economy. It is a form of labor power, to be sure, a human skill, an input.” (p. 171) This quote made me realize how drastically literacy and education changed throughout a century, from the demands of literacy increasing as society began to change and individuals who were illiterate had a disadvantage because the world became a world where if you wanted to know about the news you had to be able to know how to read a newspaper or a magazine. Demands of jobs who acquired little literacy suddenly increased to jobs that acquired literacy. Literacy continued to change throughout society it took turn where it was a labor power, a human skill, and an input. One of the biggest eye openers of all was the following quote: “The full worth of their literacy usually was honored only within African American community itself.” (p. 106) Brandt talks about the disadvantage of African Americans had with literacy due to discrimination and racism. American society thought that African Americans didn’t need literacy in their lives but the most powerful theme that came out of the book was that African Americans created their own way of honoring and maintaining literacy within their community.
Marissa: My best activity was Book Club #5 “What Stood Out For Me and Making Connections.” It deepened my understanding of the book because I had to find quotes from the text and then make connections with the text to my life and my thoughts. This activity was focused on Chapter 6 of the book, “The Means of Production: Literacy and Stratification at the Twenty-First Century.” A quote that stuck out to me was “Correlations of literacy performance with individual socioeconomic status capture yet, in their shorthand way, obscure larger conditions that lie behind differential outcomes in literacy achievement.” I reflected on this and how this quote still applies to today. Literacy stratifies and widens the gap in society. This cycle of low literacy achievement and status continues to affect society. There will continue to be that gap if nothing changes and schools in low income areas don’t receive the aid they need. The place that you live should not determine whether you have access to quality education or whether you “become a statistic.” Your life should not be determined by the politics of the education system.

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Kristina: The definitions of Equality and Equity often get mixed up and might not be understood right. Equality is treating everyone the same, equity is giving everyone what they need to be successful. Accommodations and modifications are more effective in the classroom rather than finding something “cute” off of Pinterest and not all of your students are going to gain anything from it. In chapter 6, Brandt discusses the issue of schools that receive higher test scores get funded, while schools who don't have high test scores, get nothing. One of the major themes of this book is the socio-economic status of families and schools. It is a frustrating for struggling students to not get the proper and needed resources to help them, while the students who are succeeding, get more of the resources. Students who can get the help they need in the areas that they struggle in is so important rather than just teaching the same curriculum to everyone in the classroom.

Marissa: Equitable literacy practices ties into the many themes of Literacy in American Lives. One of the themes discussed is discrimination and literacy acquisition. Chapter 4 says, “The history of African American literacy in some ways confirms the thesis of this study but in other ways complicates it. On the one hand, gaps between white and black literacy have been as persistent a social fact in the twentieth century as gaps between white and black income… on the other hand, however, there are parts of the story of African American literacy that elude the argument; basic literacy rates among African Americans rose from 30% in 1910 to more the 80% by 1930 to over 95% by 1970.” The idea that literacy learning for African Americans rose, but that they were still discriminated against is crazy to me because they were making huge advances in literacy but it didn’t reflect in other areas. There’s a link between race and access, achievement, and reward for literacy. This affects students and all of society when talking about the education system. Factors such as race and socioeconomic status influence the equitable literacy practices that teachers have. Being aware that students are seen as having an advantage or disadvantage in the world means that we need to give our students the best education we can, with or without resources provided by the school or district. We need to continue to teach marginalized students that they can be successful and guide them to be invested in their literacy growth and education. We have to fight for the rights of our students.
Monica: Equitable literacy is more than using culture or being aware of diversity in our classrooms. It prepares us to see how opportunity and success is different because of someone’s race, gender, class, language, disabilities, and more. Since the theme of the book focuses on the economic, political, and sociocultural effects and how it influenced literacy on the American society, it gave us a better understanding how some people were affected because of their class. The quote “Blum’s grandmother, not untypical of Jewish women of her time and station, could neither read nor write in either language.” This reflects on the lack of literacy Blum’s grandmother received because of her gender, and because of this Blum had a strive to read the newspaper because she wanted to be more informed on what was happening around her and for the purpose of “social distinction”. Chapter four of the book had a quote that caught me attention, “the nation has given little consideration to the human development, including literacy development, of African Americans”, this quote stood out to me because even today we see students from low-income areas or areas who have predominantly African American’s being “neglected” with their resources. I thought of Lebron James when I read this quote, he is someone who gave back to his community and built a school for the low income students and made school tuition free, had every resource they need, and you can see how the students have strived through that. The practice of literacy shouldn’t be taken out on these students because of where they come from, they didn’t choose to live where they do, or be raised how they are, as teachers It is our duty to advocate for these students in every way possible so they can be successful in society.
Carolina: One quote that reminded me of equitable literacy practices was the following: “But, as a matter of fact, the advantage of literate skill is helping to aggravate social inequity. Just, as it seems, the rich get richer, the literate get more literate” (p. 169). During one of the chapters Brandt talks about the inequalities of funding throughout schools across America. Brandt points out that coincidentally; schools that are struggling with trying to teach students how to read and write receive the least funding while schools that strive for students to become literate receive the most funding. People who are born in the low economic class have different resources in the education field where as students that were born in the middle-high class since their parents want them to attend to schools that strive for the most success and receive the most government funding. The quote in particular that I mentioned above reminded me of equitable literacy practices because unfortunately there are children in the world who do not receive the same education as other children. It is a social inequity that we as teachers need to try to change to give our students the best resources we can offer in order for them to become successful.  Therefore, the equitable practices I will do are to gain knowledge from my students and their families “funds of knowledge and respond to the adequate resources they need. I will be proactive in creating lesson plans differentiating based of student exceptionalities. I will provide extra opportunities for technology access and push toward digital literacy. I will also advocate for resources within the school and district.

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"Literacy is a Resource"
Throughout the book literacy started to evolve and become a resource to Americans.
Carolina's Video

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Deborah Brandt Ph.D. - Literacy is a resource

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Kristina's Video:

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Deborah Brandt on how "writing has become the work of our time."

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Marissa
Economic stratification impacting our school funding

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While a wave of protests, teacher strikes, and student walkouts has exposed the outrageous inequality plaguing the public education system, the budget numbers reveal how unfair funding programs dictate what our children are worth, depending on where they live, the color of their skin, and their families' wealth.

School funding levels, according to the analysis of the Education Law Center and the Rutgers Graduate School of Education , vary most dramatically along school-district lines, generally dictated by local property taxes, which renders the education of some wealthy children funded at double the rate of a poor kid's. There are also stark disparities across state lines, with statehouses primarily managing education policy. Fifteen years after "No Child Left Behind" promised to "close the achievement gaps" in race and socioeconomic background, children in more than one-third of the states are not just stagnating, they're sliding backward with what the ELC calls "regressive" funding. In 17 states, including relatively affluent Connecticut and Maine, the school systems "provide less funding to their higher poverty school districts, even though students in these districts require more resources to achieve." In many states, including Michigan and Arizona, poor kids are priced out of educational equity: "only the lowest-poverty districts have sufficient funding to reach national average student achievement outcomes."

In other states, concentrated in the South, funding is both inadequate and stagnant. The worst-funded states also tend to neglect the basic educational interventions that could close the gaps in academic performance by underfunding early-childhood education, paying their teachers lower wages, and failing to tackle high turnover rates and major gaps in staffing levels. The massive workload on teachers is compounded by low student-to-faculty ratios that keep children cycling through overburdened schools, overworked teachers, and curricula inadequate for meeting basic state standards-which in turn results in year upon year of "underperforming" ratings for the district.

Nationwide, most states maintained "flat" or "regressive" funding patterns that ignore the need for additional funding in high-poverty districts, and just 11 states allocated additional funds to offset the barriers of concentrated poverty. That's just half the number of schools making the extra effort to tackle poverty a decade ago, as the country was just diving into the Great Recession.

Under the Obama administration, school reformers led a drive toward testing and assessment as the chief measure of academic "achievement," which, when coupled with the punishing austerity budgets that states imposed on many of their school services and programs, caused schools to become more unequal across the country, between districts, and even within communities. Despite the promises of equity in education, poor families' children are being left far behind with wildly unequal funding levels: There's a threefold difference between per-student spending in New York (with more than $18,500 spent on each child-though schools remain highly segregated) and Idaho (with less than $6,300 spent per student). In Utah, poor districts are actually punished financially, receiving 25 percent less funding than per child in a richer neighboring district.

The report also found more subtle ways that underfunding undermines educational quality. The majority of states lack progressive teacher-staffing ratios, for example, so that students who face high poverty levels are assigned the same distribution of teachers as better-off children, or are actually in schools with fewer teachers per class compared to more affluent districts. In Florida, for example, "the poorest districts have about 25 percent fewer teachers per 100 students than low poverty districts."

Many states have tried to close funding gaps over the years. Nationwide the number of districts with targeted integration plans has more than doubled since 2007, according to the Center for American Progress (CAP). But funding reforms such as strategic district zoning to encourage economic integration and magnet school programs only reach about 8 percent of all students. The Trump administration is now pulling back funding from integration projects, leaving struggling school districts to pursue such initiatives on their own, at a time when all school funding is increasingly constrained.

Current Issue

According to Sharon Krengel, NLC's policy and outreach director, whether they're spreading around funding or designing enrollment plans to move kids across district lines, "what is essential is a state finance system that recognizes the unique needs of all students, especially low-income students, and delivers funding equitably and adequately...equalized does not mean equitable. Equity means that poor students-who require more services-get additional funding to address those needs."

It's also important to recognize why those needs exist. Disparities in school funding, insofar as they are direct reflections of inequality across districts, can be traced to historically ingrained patterns of housing segregation and discrimination. The link between economic and racial stratification has an acute impact in about 40 percent of school districts, according to CAP, with a majority of students attending economically isolated schools, so that wealthier and poorer kids are physically and socially segregated throughout their educational careers.

The problem has gotten so bad in some communities that lawsuits have been filed to hold states accountable for unfair funding levels. In New York, the Alliance for Quality Education has led a massive litigation effort to compel the state to redistribute funds to ensure equitable funding for students in poor schools. The effort has made some progress in equalizing funding over the years, but progress has been stalled by systemwide cutbacks to K-12 education, and the latest budget proposal from Governor Cuomo offers less than half of what it would take to fulfill the goals of the Alliance's equity plan.

School budgets are moral documents, revealing not only how much society values education as a public good, but how we value the children of different communities. Today, with a reactionary administration seeking to privatize public education further, children living in extreme deprivation stand to lose the most. About four in 10 students attend schools in districts with poverty rates of upwards of 75 percent, which perpetuates the structural poverty that keeps families trapped in poor communities with impoverished schools.

Underfunding education doesn't just leave the most vulnerable children ill-prepared for the world, it makes the world a crueler and more divided place to grow up in.

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How Unequal School Funding Punishes Poor Kids

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While a wave of protests, teacher strikes, and student walkouts has exposed the outrageous inequality plaguing the public education system, the budget numbers reveal how unfair funding programs dictate what our children are worth, depending on where they live, the color of their skin, and their families' wealth.