I suspect a big reason for this can be blamed on the US no longer teaching kids to read with the phonics method (learning how yo sound out words by individual letters), and instead have been teaching a method to figure out what a word means with context clues, but many kids cannot sound out an unfamiliar word since they weren’t taught the phonics method.
Only now are states beginning to reverse that in an attempt to reverse reduced literacy rates, which will take some time to have a noticeable effect.
In a 2019 interview, Goodman responded to criticisms of three cueing, saying that “word recognition is a preoccupation” and emphasizing that he places greater value on making sense of language as a whole than understanding specific words. In response to the example of children failing to distinguish between “pony” and “horse”, Goodman argued that it was irrelevant whether children understood the specific word, as “pony” and “horse” are similar concepts, and a reader failing to distinguish between them would still understand the meaning of the story as a whole.
He’s literally describing what people with functional illiteracy do to work around being unable to read at a working level. He’s describing it as an acceptable goal. Batshit crazy.
Social media likely is a contributing factor. The pandemic is another factor for lower literacy elsewhere. I suspect that the poor reading method taught in the US only compounded those issues to an even harsher degree.
Pandemic definitely hit this too. The schools in my state have consistently scored about one grade level down for every cohort that was in school during 2020. That experiment in fully remote schooling (elementary through highschool) definitely failed - it’s as if they didn’t even go to school that year.
The pandemic made things worse, but something bigger is going on.
The new data provides the first national comparison of school districts through 2025, and… underscores that many districts have experienced a long-term slump in student achievement, not just a blip during the pandemic.
From 2017 to 2019, students lost as much ground in reading as they did during the pandemic, and reading scores continued to fall at a similar rate through 2024.
Students’ test scores had been increasing since 1990 — then abruptly stopped in the mid-2010s. That coincided with two events: an easing of federal school accountability under No Child Left Behind, which was replaced in 2015, and the rise of smartphones, social media and personalized school laptops.
It’s gonna be the pandemic hands down. The school system was never good at catching up students who were a year behind and that happened at scaleband now the system has no way to adapt
I don’t think this explains 2015 versus 2025. Phonics started to get discouraged around 2000, and the pendulum has swung back hard the other way in the last 5 years, with the last holdout districts/states re-implementing phonics-based instruction.
If anything, I’d expect 2025 students to have had more experience with phonics in school than 2015 students.
Finding information on if it was universally adopted is proving difficult. Best I could find is when states started enacting legislation against 3-Cueing. Mississippi was the first to require phonics be taught to children back in 2013, and they are the only state in the OP’s graph to show a strong improvement since 2015 (even though it’s still not reading at grade-level). Unfortunately Covid threw a wrench in our ability to suss out if eliminating 3-cueing is helping, as even if it did, the lack of schooling during that period seems to have really set back all of the kids who went through it, as they can’t really benefit from teaching phonics if they’re receiving it poorly through tele-schooling.
The new report found that science of reading reforms were necessary, but not sufficient, to improve scores. Only states that had embraced science of reading reforms showed improvement from 2022 to 2025 — yet not all of those that did saw gains.
I suspect a big reason for this can be blamed on the US no longer teaching kids to read with the phonics method (learning how yo sound out words by individual letters), and instead have been teaching a method to figure out what a word means with context clues, but many kids cannot sound out an unfamiliar word since they weren’t taught the phonics method.
Only now are states beginning to reverse that in an attempt to reverse reduced literacy rates, which will take some time to have a noticeable effect.
Absolute nightmare
He’s literally describing what people with functional illiteracy do to work around being unable to read at a working level. He’s describing it as an acceptable goal. Batshit crazy.
That’s some ponyshit reasoning.
Similar trends are observed in other countries, so the explanation isn’t US-specific.
Instead, it’s simpler: kids read less than they used to, and when they do, it’s social media-tier.
Social media likely is a contributing factor. The pandemic is another factor for lower literacy elsewhere. I suspect that the poor reading method taught in the US only compounded those issues to an even harsher degree.
Pandemic definitely hit this too. The schools in my state have consistently scored about one grade level down for every cohort that was in school during 2020. That experiment in fully remote schooling (elementary through highschool) definitely failed - it’s as if they didn’t even go to school that year.
The pandemic made things worse, but something bigger is going on.
It’s gonna be the pandemic hands down. The school system was never good at catching up students who were a year behind and that happened at scaleband now the system has no way to adapt
The pandemic made it worse, but the trend was already negative before the pandemic.
100%, the pandemic likely compounded the issue dramatically.
I don’t think this explains 2015 versus 2025. Phonics started to get discouraged around 2000, and the pendulum has swung back hard the other way in the last 5 years, with the last holdout districts/states re-implementing phonics-based instruction.
If anything, I’d expect 2025 students to have had more experience with phonics in school than 2015 students.
Were all states doing that together? With fifty “laboratories of democracy” it should be possible to tell if 3Q hurts or not.
Finding information on if it was universally adopted is proving difficult. Best I could find is when states started enacting legislation against 3-Cueing. Mississippi was the first to require phonics be taught to children back in 2013, and they are the only state in the OP’s graph to show a strong improvement since 2015 (even though it’s still not reading at grade-level). Unfortunately Covid threw a wrench in our ability to suss out if eliminating 3-cueing is helping, as even if it did, the lack of schooling during that period seems to have really set back all of the kids who went through it, as they can’t really benefit from teaching phonics if they’re receiving it poorly through tele-schooling.
From the article: