They need more than that. And it doesn't include taking endless tests. Federal control of schools needs to be ended.
And who said they can read? They are no longer taught phonics. From 4th grade on, no studying verbs, adverbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives.... we took our daughter OUT of public school. The private school asked her to diagram a sentence. She'd NEVER heard of it.
Yeah all those tests are really helping.
I went to a public school system in the 1960’s that didn’t take any federal money plus most importantly, used the phonics books, SRA Reading Labs etc.
I buy the phonics part of your argument.