If Cuba can eradicate illiteracy, Minnesota certainly can

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There are 500,000 K-12 students in Minnesota who are not reading proficiently. If you lined them up all holding hands, they would stretch from here to Chicago.

Twice that number of Cubans learned to read in less than two years back in 1961. Cuba virtually eliminated illiteracy. Cuba is an example of what can happen when public policy is executed on a scale that matches the scope of the problem and accomplished with the fierce urgency of now. The Cuban Literacy Campaign was a top funding priority in a country with a paltry budget.

If Cuba can do it, there is no reason Minnesota can't.

The consequences of a child not being able to read are staggering. It erodes a child's self-esteem, confidence and triggers shame. For many it becomes a pipeline to prison. Children unable to read by grade three are more likely to get poor grades, be truant, drop out of school, end up in special education, have discipline problems and enter the juvenile justice system. The ripple effect impacts the family, livelihood, community and health and has toxic impact on the workplace and the economic engine of the state. While the problem crosses the socioeconomic strata of our state, it disproportionately impacts those living in pockets of poverty and in communities of Black people, Indigenous people and others of color.

The problem isn't that our children can't learn. The primary problem is that the methods we've used to teach reading don't work. Developments in neuroscience, research on school readiness, crime, juvenile detention and workplace readiness tell a compelling story of what works, what doesn't and the economic consequences of ignoring the problem.

Consider this: 85% of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system in this country are functionally illiterate. According to the Department of Justice, "The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure." More than 70% of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth-grade level.

Minnesotans know what to do. But do we have the will to do it?

Like or loathe Fidel Castro, the literacy campaign he spearheaded became an award-winning UNESCO model replicated in dozens of developing countries. The literacy campaign was the top priority, and a large portion of a meager budget was dedicated to accomplish this BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal) called "We Shall Conquer" (Venceremos).

Despite the "brain drain" of the professional class of educators, business tycoons and university professors, Cuba created a three-stage literacy campaign: 1) Design the texts to train the literacy volunteers. 2) Recruit and train 100,000 young students as the initial brigade of volunteers. 3) Engage the business community, factory workers and other adults as the second wave of tutors, and develop acceleration camps for those who needed additional help the traditional program couldn't provide.

Altogether a quarter of a million volunteers armed with textbooks, kerosene lanterns, worn-out boots and a can-do spirit set out to teach every agricultural worker in every remote village with a goal to reach 100% of the population. They targeted poverty-ridden communities without running water nor electricity and with the highest rates of illiteracy.

It worked. This tsunami of volunteers transformed Cuba from a country with one of the worst literacy rates on the globe to one of the highest. Ninety-six percent of Cubans learned to read, and it was achieved in less than two years. Prior to the campaign, the illiteracy rate in the urban communities was 11%. Among the agricultural workers in rural areas the rate was less than 47%.

Minnesota already has the expertise, the methods of training and literacy programs with empirical evidence that proves they work. What is missing is the will to make it happen. The governor and legislature need a BHAG and to dedicate the resources to make it happen. Unleashing Minnesota's abundant social capital with a fierce urgency of now can result in a Minnesota Miracle — every child is a proficient reader by grade three.

Both the Minnesota House and Senate Education Committees have included significant changes in policy related to literacy in their bills moving through the Legislature. The financing to put these changes into practice is pathetic. The appropriations don't match the scope nor urgency of the problem. These bills can only muster the political will to invest $70 to $140 dollars per student. That includes all of the costs to retrain teachers, coach them in putting that training into practice, and buying all the new classroom materials teachers will need. This is chump change up against the challenge.

Literacy experts say with this meager investment it could be a decade before we see any meaningful change in outcomes. In the meantime we will continue to see our students pay the price for our being just plain cheap. Our continued failure to implement what we know works will provide ample ammunition to the opponents to argue it was the wrong policy in the first place. Policy, no matter how grand, without execution is just wishful thinking. Actually, it is worse — it is a lie.

We do not have to live with our failure to effectively teach our children to read. We either invest in literacy now or pay for the consequences in the future. Economists, including our homegrown champion of early childhood education, Art Rolnick, former senior vice president and director of research at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, have calculated a 7% return on investment. Prof. James J. Heckman, a Nobel laureate and expert in the economics of human development, found that high-quality early learning investments can yield a 13% annual ROI per child, through better education, economic, health and social outcomes.

The economic arguments are compelling. The positive impact this investment will have on children growing up in Minnesota is even more so.

If Cuba can, we have no excuse not to.

Tim Reardon is a public affairs consultant who lives in Plymouth.