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How our schools’ foolishness is courting ‘civilizational failure’

We’ve been having a debate about “book bans” in recent years, but given the steep decline in student literacy, the deeper question is how any child would even notice whether a book is available in a school library or not. 

The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford recently published an eye-opening study documenting steep declines in student test scores, especially in reading. 

Over the past 10 years, reading scores have declined in 83% of America’s school districts. 

What looked like a COVID-driven catastrophe is, instead, part of a long-running trend.

Reading scores were falling at a similar clip prior to the pandemic, in 2017-2019, and continued to fall into 2024.

In a third of school districts, kids are reading a full grade level below where they were in 2015. 

High school student exposes classmates’ abysmal reading skills — as they struggle with words like ‘silhouette,’ ‘extraordinary’

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s pathetic ‘science of reading’ fiasco

California’s top librarian torched as $1.1M vanishes from Dolly Parton literacy program: new docs

This follows what had been a steady increase in test scores from 1990 to the 2010s.

The ability to read........

© New York Post