Isn't the first 'R' reading?

So the Charleston County School Board is considering a new policy that says its No. 1 goal should be cranking out literate students.

That's wonderful, practically visionary. There's just one question: What's their No. 1 goal right now?

You know, if Family Feud did a poll asking "Name a reason you go to school," it's a pretty safe bet that survey says "Learn to Read."

But apparently that's not been enough of a focus for schools in recent years. In fact, the school board didn't propose a policy on reading expectations until a series of articles by Diette Courrégé in The Post and Courier pointed out problems with illiteracy in high schools.

For instance, nearly 20 percent of the county's ninth-graders now read on a fourth-grade level, or worse.

That is not only pathetic, it's scary.

Thank goodness a Wii comes with a picture diagram that shows how to plug it in, or we might have an epidemic of kids dying from boredom.

Not just for school

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, South Carolina ranked 50th in graduation rates as recently as 2005. Basically, slightly fewer than half of the state's ninth-graders graduate within four years.

Alan Richard, director of communications for the Southern Regional Education Board, says many of those dropouts are the ones who can't even read at a fourth-grade level when they reach high school.

The education board, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to improve education in the South, long has made reading its No. 1 priority.

"Studies show that many employers aren't satisfied with the reading skills of their employees," Richard says. "Workplaces demand more reading, writing and thinking skills than ever before."

Which might explain why the state's unemployment rate is so high. Who's going to relocate their business to a state with a high percentage of functionally illiterate workers?

Hit the books

Now, it's easy to beat up on the schools -- as evidenced by the fact that a lot of people do it -- but this isn't entirely their fault. A lot of kids aren't encouraged to read by their parents and aren't ready for schools when they get there. Reading should start at home.

But maybe schools need to spend more time teaching reading than on studying for those MAP tests (which have nothing to do with geography).

Of course, the simple solution is not to pass these kids on to the next grade if they can't read well enough.

If South Carolina wants to solve its employment problems (and a lot of others), it ought to do what some other states do: stop kids who can't read at grade level from advancing until they catch up in summer school. Florida does something like that, and the Alabama Reading Initiative, a program that promotes 100 percent literacy, is doing wonders. Alabama has had the greatest gain of reading test scores for fourth-graders in the nation lately.

It seems Charleston County, and every other school district in the state, should get that hard-nosed. Quit debating. Just do it. This is important.

If they can't read, how are these kids supposed to update their Facebook pages?