Back to School, Behind on Reading: Why America’s Literacy Crisis Persists
Despite decades of reform and billions in funding, over 60% of fourth and eighth graders remain below "proficient" reading levels. With over 40 states now mandating "Science of Reading" overhauls, the nation finds itself at a critical inflection point of clashing instructional philosophies, socio-economic gaps, and mounting parental frustration.
The Insight provides you the full picture of facts and viewpoints on a top issue for Americans each week, powered by your questions and balanced answers from our multipartisan news team.
The Questions
Is the nationwide transition to the 'Science of Reading' having an effect?
The science of reading program draws on 50 years of research from neuroscience, linguistics, developmental psychology, and cognitive science about how students learn to read and write, combining phonics and language and comprehension instruction.
According to the National Education Association, “An Education Week analysis found that, as of September 5, 2024, 40 states and the District of Columbia have laws or policies around evidence-based reading instruction—the foundation of the Science of Reading. Some of these laws and policies require that educators remove balanced literacy approaches from their curriculum and be trained in the Science of Reading.”
Teachers against the policy argue that it's too prescriptive, limiting teacher autonomy and differentiation for students who learn at different paces. Extensive time and money (Ohio spent $169 million) are spent retraining successful teachers and forcing them to adopt a new curriculum, including teachers not focused on reading in some states, like high school art and physical education teachers.
Those for the policies are more likely to argue that the science of reading is an evidence-based program that will help more students become literate compared to failed programs. One such program was “three-cueing,” which instructed students to guess the meaning of words based on syntax and visual information as opposed to sounding out the word using phonics. One third-grade classroom in Indiana has been using the science of reading for the last three years and saw its IREAD test score improve by 3.2% between 2025 and 2026—the highest reading scores in eight years.
Some contend that test scores have been so low in past years that an increase doesn’t prove that the science of reading is the best program. An increase in the lowest scores of some students doesn’t capture how many highly literate students’ scores decreased or stayed the same due to lack of engagement and opportunity for advancement. By focusing on the needs of a segment of students who struggle with literacy, the new program could negatively affect other segments of students, but it’s impossible to know the costs (or successes) of the program until it plays out.
The decline in literacy cannot be linked to smartphones, instructional methods, or chronic absenteeism in perfect percentages. However, research does show that absenteeism has increased since before the COVID-19 pandemic, and reading is constantly competing for sustained attention with digital media on smartphones.
On average, a quarter of students are chronically absent. This is up from an average of 16% before the pandemic.
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Images via future-ed.org
The National Assessment Governing Board, a group that sets policy for the Nation’s Report Card, found that changes in attendance were associated with 45% of the 3-point reading decline in Grade 4 and 36% of the reading decline in Grade 8.
It is also true that phones affect students’ attention spans and reading comprehension skills, but phone bans may not be the only answer to improving literacy.
One 2024 review looked at seven different studies on phone bans – in four of the studies, schools reported improved academic achievement, but three found no difference at all. A 2025 SMART schools study comparing 1,227 students found that restrictive phone policies helped reduce in-school phone use by 30-40 minutes, but didn’t find improvement in other areas of health or academic achievement. This is probably because a school rule can affect behavior during school hours, but not how a student interacts with devices overall.
In fact, UCLA researchers studied students in groups who own phones and bring them to school, own phones but leave them at home, and do not own phones at all, and found that phone ownership – rather than the presence of the device – was linked to lower reading comprehension scores than students who did not own phones at all.
Why do nearly 90% of parents believe their child is reading at or above grade level when national data shows less than one-third actually are?
“‘A’ is now the most common grade awarded at American universities – sometimes by comical proportions,” according to the Education Department. “From 1990-2020, four-year college grade point averages (GPAs) rose more than 16% at public and non-profit universities… In 2020-21, Harvard University awarded ‘A’s’ 79% of the time – and Yale recorded the same rate of awarding A’s in 2022-23.” Meanwhile, reading scores continue to decline. “When top marks are awarded to nearly every student,” the department stated, “grading becomes a farce.”
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RELATED: Study Suggests Phone Ownership, Rather Than Classroom Distraction, Linked to Lower Reading Scores | AllSides
The department’s statement cited “educators responding to ‘consumer demand’ for higher grades [and approval] from students” and “students self-selecting into less rigorous courses and disciplines” as the two major causes of this “grade inflation,” which creates a disparity between grade and true academic levels. It highlighted several resulting issues:
- Decreased student effort due to decreased educational incentives
- Decreased admissions and employment requirements due to unreliable indicators of student success
- Increased student stress “because students come to regard anything short of an ‘A’ as akin to failing”
The National Education Association agreed in March, “While grades keep going up, up, up in high schools and colleges, other measures of achievement are not. Teachers and faculty face pressure to keep students and families happy – and some research says more rigorous grades wouldn’t help students' learning (or their mental health).” However, it criticized in another article that even “standardized tests don’t accurately measure student learning and growth.” This conclusion contrasts the Education Department’s position that, “Standardized test score reporting would help departments – and ideally, universities and university systems – to craft fairer and more precisely calibrated reforms.”
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute reported in 2024, “Since the beginning of the [COVID-19] pandemic, even students at the 25th percentile of ACT performance (i.e., students performing far below average) have boasted GPAs above 3.0. That means these low-performing students received more A grades than Cs, Ds, and Fs combined.” The article stated, “It is common sense that students will study less and learn less when they have less motivation and pressure from their parents, and academic studies bear out this intuition… If students in less affluent schools receive higher grades that do not reflect their actual performance, as research indicates is happening, they may not receive the support and interventions they need to improve.”
The Federalist (Right bias) further cited “passing grade inflation” as the “narrower form of leniency pushing marginal students just over the failing line.” The outlet cautioned that grade inflation “sets students on trajectories that favor comfort over mastery” and often results in financial strains for students unprepared for the workforce. It stated, “Parents pile on fierce pressure for easy As. Too many refuse to face reality: not every child is college material, yet viable non-college pathways exist—if only families would consider them.”
Nearly every data analysis suggested transparency as a key restorative method. The Education Department called it a “minimally burdensome path toward solving grade inflation.” It asserted, “Listing course average grades next to student grades would help to lessen the perceived costs of rigorous grading.”
The department also asserted, “educators across departments, colleges, and universities should collaborate to establish consistent, meaningful grading standards. Several universities have taken meaningful action to restore rigor: Harvard, for example, recently announced a plan to make grading data available to faculty to ‘guide departmental conversations’ on the topic.”
What happens to the middle and high school students who missed foundational literacy instruction during the primary grades or pandemic disruptions?
While the science of reading movement has focused more on elementary grades, a larger cohort of older students – many affected by the pandemic – reached middle and high school without mastering foundational reading skills.
The Associated Press (Lean Left) shared data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showing 12th-grade reading scores dropped to their lowest level in more than 20 years. Some researchers estimated roughly 64% of eighth graders were below proficient levels in reading. A recent viral video showed a Texas high school teacher breaking down in tears over his students’ lack of literacy.
While school performance has continued to decline since the pandemic, literacy scores have been dropping since before 2020. In September 2020, Gallup (Center) published a study that found low levels of adult literacy could be costing the U.S. as much as $2.2 trillion a year.
The long-term stakes of this education loss are significant. The World Literacy Foundation estimated that low literacy skills cost the US economy $300 billion annually in lost earnings, lower productivity, and higher reliance on government assistance.
Education Week (Center) reported that several states, including Indiana, Mississippi, and Virginia, have extended screening and intervention requirements to help mitigate the loss of education in middle school, while Minnesota and Maryland have added foundational literacy expectations. The outlet noted that implementation of these mandates could be complicated as middle schools operate differently from elementary schools and don’t have dedicated time for reading intervention in the schedule. Places like New York City have mandated the use of city-approved intervention programs for struggling readers between elementary and high school. Middle schools will also be required to transition to city-approved reading and math curricula by fall 2027.
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