America recently received its national report card, and students’ reading scores are the lowest they have been in decades.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is an assessment used as a progress report on the state of the nation’s K-12 education system. Results make it clear that students are struggling to recuperate following the learning loss induced by the pandemic, especially in reading. Scores indicate that 33 percent of eighth graders are reading at a “below basic” level, meaning they lack fundamental literacy comprehension skills, like identifying the main idea in a passage. I remember learning how to identify the main idea in the third grade. If nearly a third of soon-to-be high school freshmen can’t successfully find an author’s primary message, the American K-12 education system is fundamentally failing its students.
Educators and experts have varied opinions on the causes of the alarmingly low reading scores. School closures due to the pandemic, increased social media usage, shortened attention spans — these are all probable factors. While the pandemic certainly accelerated learning loss, students' reading levels had already been declining for years. However, there is an essential part of literacy that I believe many schools have lost sight of: community.
While students in the 75th percentile are scoring just below pre-pandemic levels, the lowest-performing students are struggling the most. As a student who once fell beneath the 25th percentile for reading, I can’t help but recall my own experience in the K-12 education system.
English was not my first language. I grew up speaking my mother tongue, Hindi, with my parents. Unlike many of my peers, I did not grow up in a household that established a strong foundation in English vocabulary, and my grade school reading scores clearly reflected this. I vividly remember sitting in a cold metal chair during my first parent-teacher conference, staring at the ground, as my second-grade teacher told my parents she was very concerned about my lack of English comprehension.
My panicked and confused immigrant parents hired a wonderful ex-Harvard English professor — shoutout Ms. Linda — who was very helpful, yet I don’t attribute my increase in Lexile level to her. What do I attribute my improvement to?
It was racing with my friends to finish the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series. It was trying to guess the culprit in “The Westing Game” during our free period in the fourth grade. It was joining my local library’s children’s book club so I could share my newfound passion for reading with other kids. While my English tutor certainly helped, it was immersion in a literacy-oriented community that pulled me out of the 25th percentile.
Of course, some kids naturally gravitate toward books, shared learning environment or not, but we can’t rely on all students having the same internal motivation. It is the job of educators to step past the boundaries of the given curriculum so that all students can foster a their own love for literature.
This principle followed me into high school and college. With a busy schedule, extracurriculars, sports, jobs and other stressors, reading for fun fell lower and lower on my list of priorities before it entirely disappeared. It wasn’t until my high school AP Literature teacher reintroduced read-aloud that I rediscovered my love for reading. We read “Othello” as a class, acting out all scenes — from Iago’s deceit to Desdemona’s unwavering faith.
