Reading crisis

Washington Examiner -  America is facing a reading catastrophe. Nearly five years after pandemic closures, only 31% of fourth graders can read proficiently, achievement gaps are widening, and student performance continues to slide. Yet instead of treating literacy as an emergency, many of the nation’s most powerful teachers unions remain consumed by political activism — organizing protests, advancing ideological causes, and turning classrooms into vehicles for social advocacy while millions of children struggle to read at grade level.

....The data is stark: Fourth- and eighth-graders are now reading two points below their 2022 levels, extending an already steep 3-point drop since 2019. The lowest-performing students now score roughly 100 points below the highest-performing students, a gap that has been growing for a decade.

Surprisingly, the data also show that the learning crisis did not originate with COVID-19, but started around 2013. The pandemic didn’t create this disaster — it accelerated one already well underway.