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“Kids can’t read anymore.”
We heard this refrain earlier this month, when some Reading is connected to a decline Among young people, as well as with Donald Trump’s recent presidential election victory, there has been a shift towards receiving news and information from short form videos. But concerns about children’s reading have grown over the years, with educators and other commentators worried that students aren’t recognizing characters, children’s novels are falling out of fashion, and young adults are entering college without being able to. Read an entire book.
I know that the pandemic has affected children’s test scores in reading and math. But I also know that older generations like to complain about ne’er-do-well youngsters who can’t be bothered to open a book. So I reached out to educators and literacy scholars about how far behind children really are and what their reading skills (or lack thereof) mean for their future as voters, news consumers, and citizens of the world.
Although children’s reading performance has declined in recent years, some experts say The language of “crisis”. In fact, reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), one of the most widely used nationwide measures of student achievement, Not much has changed Since the tests were introduced in 1969, Katherine SnowProfessor of Knowledge and Learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told me.
“They didn’t fall,” Snow said. “They did not lag behind even during Covid. They went down a little.”
But what has decreased is how much children read, especially outside of school. In 1984, the first year for which data are available, 35 percent of 13-year-old boys reported reading “almost every day” for fun. According to NAEP. By 2023, that number had dropped to 14 percent, and 31 percent of respondents said they never read for fun. Children are also in bad condition Tests that measure their information literacyincluding their ability to recognize reliable sources.
These findings indicate a broader problem. Kids may be learning basic literacy, but “they’re not reading the way they need to be to prepare for learning and critical thinking,” Snow said. And this decline in critical thinking skills has major implications not just for today’s youth, but for society as a whole.
“These are our voters,” said Christina Cover, a special education teacher in the Bronx who leads the way Project for Adolescent Literacy At the nonprofit Sick Common Ground, I was told. “These are the people who are really leading us to what’s next for our country and our world.”
Children’s reading scores have been (relatively) stable for decades
NAEP tests, administered every two years for five decades, Offers a bird’s eye view How American children’s reading skills have changed over time. After rising in the 2000s, scores began to decline around 2012, a trend intensified with the pandemic.
Educators are concerned about the drop, with many calling for expanded tutoring, summer school and other supports to help kids get back on track. At the same time, even the post-Covid numbers are not too far from historical norms. In 1971, the first year for which data is available, Average NAEP scores for 9-year-olds There were 208 out of a possible 500. In 2022 it was 215.
To be clear, these scores aren’t great. It’s also disappointing to see students lose some of the ground they gained in the 2000s, and the pandemic has dealt a very real blow, especially to low-income students and other already-disadvantaged groups. As for what students should be teaching in 2020 and 2021, teachers now “have to reach back and maybe catch up or review those earlier standards,” reading interventionist Evelyn Rudolph of LEAD Academy, a public charter school in Montgomery, Alabama, told me.
But the story of student reading scores over the past few decades has been “a very stable level of mediocrity.” Tushar saidNot a sudden crisis.
But reading for pleasure has declined
That’s the good news. More alarming — or at least more rapid — is the decline in children’s reading for pleasure. when was indication of reduction In the 90s, the slide seems to have begun in earnest in the 2010s — in 2012, 27 percent of 13-year-olds read for fun every day, compared to just 17 percent in 2020.
Experts aren’t sure why so many children have stopped reading, but the trend coincides with the widespread adoption of smartphones, he said Ebony WaltonA statistician at the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP tests. Other assumptions included Reduced funding to librariesand one Too much focus on standardized tests It has fostered practices that instill a love of reading, such as teachers reading books aloud to students.
Regardless, the decline in reading for fun is a problem, and not just for fun Children’s author. “When a student reads for fun and enjoys reading outside of school, there are so many benefits that they may not even realize,” from learning new vocabulary to “gaining the background knowledge needed to communicate in different academic areas at school,” Cover says. .
Snow said the skills students use when reading for fun — especially long texts — are similar to what they need for everything from reading car manuals to “listening and making sense of political speeches.”
The importance of reading skills for civic engagement has become a hot-button topic lately, with Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor Young people today are being called the “literate generation” that “gets information from bits and bobs of video while scrolling.” While “post-literacy” may be a stretch, Tushar and other experts worry that the decline in reading may make young people more susceptible to distraction.
There is some evidence that this is already happening. Average scores of US eighth-graders Evaluation of the International Computer and Information Literacy Studywhich measures proficiency with identifying reliable online sources, fell 37 points between 2018 and 2023 to 482 out of a possible 700. American students did worse on the assessment than most European countries, as well as students from South Korea and Taiwan
Reversing the decline of reading for pleasure may seem impossible, given the number of options available to children today. But experts say some simple tricks can help. For Snow, it’s about reading not just as an academic skill to be mastered, but “as a tool to engage in important activities, such as learning about things that interest you.” Reading can be a way to engage with social justice issues that many tweens and teens are passionate about — “but those connections aren’t always made in school,” Snow said.
Cover says it’s also important to encourage students to read what they like, how they like, whether it’s in a book or on an iPad or other device. More companies are emerging to create reading materials specifically for the Gen Alpha audience, e.g Share the storywhich offers self-written books to young people.
Children are “reading into the world around them every day,” says Cover. It’s up to educators to show them that “it’s not just something isolated, but something that can enrich every area of their lives.”
what am i reading
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from my inbox
Last week, I asked about your kids’ reading experiences and one reader, Kelly, had an experience that might be helpful for kids who struggle with reading for fun. “Two of my four children have dyslexia, so we were a little slow to become a ‘read to yourself’ family,” Kelly wrote. “But audiobooks mean they still grow up loving reading from childhood… just in a different form.” The children’s grandmother “introduced my then-3-year-old daughter to Peter Pan on her iPod audiobook, earbuds attached, and my daughter was hooked,” Kelly wrote. “In the nine years since then, we’ve tested literally thousands of audiobooks Libby — free thanks to the Los Angeles Public Library — and my kids listen for hours every day.”
