The Lottery

Last weekend Jeff and I watched the documentary “The Lottery” about the charter school movement. The title of the documentary refers to the fact that in order to be fair (as publicly funded schools), charters must have lotteries every year to determine incoming classes. In this way they cannot discriminate based on sex, gender, religion, learning needs or disabilities.


While the film never mentions libraries (though perhaps it should!), Library Build is dedicated to a general reform of America’s education system.

Here are some facts from the film:

Fact #1: The average black or Latino 12th grader reads at the same level as the average white 8th grader.

Fact #2: 58% of black fourth graders are functionally illiterate.

Fact # 3: The achievement gap between low income students and their higher income peers costs the US $500 billion a year.

Fact # 4: About 50% of students in low-income communities will not graduate from high school by the time they are 18.

Fact #5: 1 in every 8 black males between the ages of 25 and 29 is incarcerated.



Facts number 1 and 2 speak directly to why Library Build is dedicated to creating school libraries in America’s public schools. 58% of black fourth graders in this country are functionally illiterate – meaning they cannot read basic texts and cannot write legibly, and through our own research we know too that if a child cannot read by the time he or she is in the third grade, his or her chances of ever becoming literate plummet.

It’s obvious that schools of any kind – private, public, charter, Catholic, etc – need to provide their students with the resources necessary to learn, and we consider a library to be one of those main and most important resources.

Check out the website for the documentary at www.thelotteryfilm.com. We highly recommend seeing this documentary!