MASSACHUSETTS IS IN the midst of a literacy crisis. In 2023, the majority of third graders in 56 percent of Massachusetts elementary schools were not proficient in reading. Given this stark reality, now is not the time for complacency or incremental steps to address this challenge.

As a first step, we have to acknowledge that reading is a learned skill. People may learn to speak naturally, but reading doesn’t work that way.

For some, learning to read is relatively effortless, but for most, years of skilled instruction is needed. Academically and socially, the sooner we identify children who need significant intervention to learn how to read, the better off they will be. Teaching most children to read independently and fluently by about age nine is a well-defined and solvable problem. Yet, in Massachusetts, 58 percent of elementary and middle school students were left behind in literacy in 2023.

In the Commonwealth, we have yet to see the level of early literacy outcomes we would like to guarantee academic success for all, and students from  low-income backgrounds and those from historically marginalized groups have continued to be poorly served. This is a systemic failure of our public school system.

In 1968, Martin Luther King wrote, “The ineffectiveness in teaching reading skills to many young people, whether white or Black, poor or rich, strongly indicts foundations and government….” Over a half century later, things are not much better.

We routinely pass large numbers of students through elementary grades without ensuring they receive the fundamental reading skills they need to master the content at the next grade level. Illiteracy is a widespread crisis as well as a civil rights issue, and decision makers and government leaders need to begin to realize the urgency of this crisis.

Among the major contributing factors are voices in policy, academia, and school district offices who insist a crisis doesn’t exist. Forces with vested interests in the status quo skillfully craft narratives that minimize consequences and distract us from data that demonstrates too many students cannot read.

Students’ lives and futures are at stake, and research shows that the odds are stacked against children who aren’t proficient in reading by the end of third grade. Deficient reading ability leads to disrupted classrooms, poor attendance, a higher likelihood of dropping out, and low achievement across all subjects and grades. When Massachusetts students aged out of middle school in 2023, about 15,000 adolescents who are struggling or unable to read were dropped into high schools as if they were on a conveyer belt.

For adults, being illiterate is a devastating millstone with lifelong negative consequences. According to the US.Department of Justice, “The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure. Over 70 percent of inmates in America’s prisons cannot read above a fourth-grade level.”

In our advanced information economy, poor reading ability is an impenetrable barrier to most employment opportunities. Low literacy traps millions into lifelong public assistance and the lowest wage levels. It is estimated that 130 million Americans—54 percent of adults between the ages of 16 and 74 years old—lack proficiency in literacy, essentially reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, as reported by the Barbara Bush Foundation. Illiteracy undermines civic engagement and has even been historically linked to voter suppression.

Denial and fierce clinging to the status quo may be rampant, but there is good news. Massachusetts has an existing Mass Literacy initiative, nationally recognized for promoting best practices in the early grades.

Gov. Healey has proposed the Literacy Launch program, with targeted resources for quickly scaling up these efforts across the Commonwealth. Additionally, the Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on Education has proposed H.4423, legislation that will ensure that the state offers and districts accept support to ensure comprehensive best practices in every classroom. Taken together, these are needed elements of an all-hands-on-deck approach that will make a real difference.

Opponents to this bill keep pushing their narratives, misrepresenting it as “one size fits all,” or overstating its impact on local control. A cohort of superintendents from mostly wealthy districts petitioned the Legislature to stand down — claiming superintendents know what’s best. Decades of subpar early literacy performance statewide proves otherwise.

The voices from school district central offices are out of step with the people they serve. Over 1,000 parents and community advocates petitioned in support of the Legislation. The future of 58 percent of our most vulnerable students should take precedence over the education field’s “business as usual” vested interests.

If the leadership of Massachusetts will listen to community members and follow the data, 2024 could be the year the Commonwealth acts with appropriate urgency, putting targeted resources and sound policy onto a path toward eliminating adolescent illiteracy. It is now in the Legislature’s hands to fund the Literacy Launch and make H.4423 law.

Michael Moriarty is a Holyoke resident and member of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.