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| Brynn Anderson / AP |
Results from the nation’s report card should be a wake-up call for all.
We need to have a serious conversation about reading. If you already stopped reading this, it is probably too late.
But you should know there is a troubling pattern taking root: Our children continue to lose ground in reading ability. The latest numbers from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as “the nation’s report card,” are heartbreaking: A staggering 33% of eighth graders are reading at a “below basic” level. The numbers are even worse for fourth graders at 40%.
Our kids can’t read anymore. This assessment should be a wake-up call not only for education policymakers and teachers but for parents as well. It is time to stop blaming the COVID-19 pandemic and recognize that this is a national emergency in which technology is one of the major culprits.
If anything, COVID aggravated a trend that was already established. Studies, some of them dating back to 2008, had found that the prevalence of digital content was fostering shallow reading habits. Don’t blame the kids; we are all guilty. Our attention spans and reading habits have diminished with the rise of technology, and we are likely encouraging this trend.
Multitasking on our cellphone screens and flipping endlessly to TikTok videos are replacing the reading experience for just about everyone. Invasive video screens are everywhere and short attention spans are the norm.
Our contributing columnist, Tyra Damm, who is also a former schoolteacher, warned us recently about how schools are producing students who can’t read. Damm pointed out a trend in which secondary teachers only teach short texts or passages because they are similar to the selections found on standardized tests. --->READ MORE HERE
Five years ago, teachers shut their classroom doors and scrambled to set up video conferences for their students.Now, new national test scores show America's kids – especially the nation's lowest achieving students – have yet to return to pre-pandemic academic levels.
Teachers, parents and education leaders are raising alarms about the state of education after seeing the sobering results of the U.S. Department of Education's latest Nation's Report Card results Wednesday. The data shows a post-pandemic nose-dive in literacy scores and a widening achievement gap between the nation's highest and lowest learners in math and reading skills.
Many of them are calling on national leaders and school officials to speed up learning recovery. Strengthening American education, they say, is urgent.
"We need to figure out what we got wrong and what we need to adjust," said Tequilla Brownie, CEO of TNTP, a nonprofit organization working to redesign education to help students of color and those living in poverty.
The U.S. has a literacy crisis
Fourth and eighth graders tested at lower reading levels on the National Assessment for Educational Progress in 2024 than before COVID-19. The achievement gap also widened between the nation's highest and lowest performing learners in literacy test scores.
The pandemic exacerbated a reading crisis that began before schools shifted to remote learning, said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. Kids now don't have the joy for reading they once did and teachers have changed the way they teach writing in the digital age, she said. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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