Reading scores have plummeted to their lowest point in three decades, leaving educators and parents scrambling for solutions. Whether you’re a teacher facing a classroom with wildly diverse reading abilities or a parent worried about your child falling behind, the current literacy crisis demands our attention and action. Recent findings from national assessments paint a sobering picture of reading achievement in America—but understanding the problem is the first step toward solving it.
The Alarming Statistics: A Nation in Reading Decline
The 2025 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results—often called “the nation’s report card”—tell a troubling story about literacy in America. “Reading scores have fallen to historic lows,” with “average reading scores [falling] by 5 points for both fourth-graders and 8th-graders” between 2019 and 2024. Even more concerning, “a staggering 33% of eighth-graders and 40% of fourth-graders scored below the ‘Basic’ level in reading, marking the worst reading scores in thirty years.”
Education researcher Dan Goldhaber puts the situation in stark terms: “I don’t think that this is the canary in the coal mine. This is… a flock of dead birds in the coal mine” (Scanning Pens, 2025). His grim metaphor underscores the severity of what we’re facing—not a warning sign of trouble ahead, but evidence of a crisis already well underway.
Despite heroic efforts from educators and billions in government funding, students who experienced pandemic-era school closures during critical developmental years are struggling to catch up. According to Robin Lake, “Hope is not a strategy for fixing them” when it comes to these “inadequate, uneven” scores.
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), one of the nation’s largest school districts, exemplifies these challenges. “Just 43.1% of LA Unified students met state proficiency targets in reading in the 2023-24 school year, compared with 44.1% in the 2018-19 school year, the last before the pandemic” (Narayanan, 2025). Despite years of intervention efforts, this minimal recovery highlights the persistence of the problem.
Research from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) suggests that addressing this crisis requires more than simply updating curricula or providing additional training to teachers. According to a recent EdSource commentary, “teachers working alone in their classrooms are ill-positioned on their own to provide the support children most need to learn to read.” This reality calls for rethinking traditional educational models that place the entire burden of literacy instruction on individual classroom teachers.
Understand the Causes: Beyond the Pandemic
While the COVID-19 pandemic certainly accelerated literacy challenges, experts suggest the roots of this crisis run deeper. The traditional model of “one adult in charge of supporting 25 or more children who arrive with wildly different levels of preparation and uneven or absent literacy support at home” creates inherent structural limitations. This approach—regardless of curriculum quality—makes it nearly impossible for teachers to provide the differentiated instruction many struggling readers need.
The pandemic exacerbated these existing challenges. As noted by the Oakland Unified School District’s literacy initiative, teachers now face “increasing behavioral challenges, an attendance crisis and larger variation in students’ learning needs,” all while public attitudes about education continue to evolve and sometimes erode teacher commitment. These compounding factors make the already complex task of teaching reading even more difficult.
Another concerning element revealed in the 2025 NAEP data is the disparity in educational expectations emerging across the country. “Nearly 60% of high-performing students reported being asked to write long answers for reading assignments more than five times last year, compared to only 32% of low-performing students.” This means many educational settings are struggling to give students at the lower end of the grade scale the tools and practice needed to improve their literacy skills.
The inconsistent application of evidence-based reading instruction compounds these issues. Many schools continue to use approaches not aligned with scientific research on how children learn to read, leading to what some literacy experts call the “reading wars.” According to the Science of Reading, historical debates between phonics-based instruction and “whole language” approaches have created confusion about the most effective teaching methods.
The Impact on Vulnerable Populations: Widening the Gap
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the literacy crisis is how it disproportionately affects already vulnerable student populations. The 2025 NAEP results “show us how starkly educational attainment is impacted by social inequalities,” presenting what Chalkbeat describes as a “sobering picture of academic haves and have-nots.”
The data reveals that “the gaps between high- and low-performing students reached their widest points in history. High-performing students are showing gains—but students from low-income households and students of color continue to fall significantly behind their peer.” This widening achievement gap threatens to further entrench educational inequalities that can affect students throughout their lives.
Students with disabilities have been particularly affected. “Reading slip is slowly becoming more entrenched in students with disabilities, too. Fourth-grade reading scores have fallen another percentage point to 183 and remained stagnant in eighth grade at 229” (Scanning Pens, 2025). Without targeted intervention, these students risk falling even further behind.
English language learners face additional challenges in developing literacy skills. As Olga Corona de la Cruz, Senior Campaign Director of the ReadLA program at Families in Schools, shares from her own experience: “I remember going into my classroom and feeling confused and feeling scared. I remember trying to interact with other students, and because I didn’t know English, I was made fun of, I was bullied.” This personal testimony highlights how literacy struggles can affect not just academic achievement but also social integration and emotional well-being.
Research shows that early literacy skills are highly predictive of later academic success. When it comes to early reading skills, “letter-name and letter-sound knowledge at age five is one of the strongest predictors of future reading success.” When children fall behind in these foundational skills, the effects can cascade throughout their educational journey.
Science of Reading as a Solution: Evidence-Based Approaches
Amid this literacy crisis, the Science of Reading (SoR) has emerged as a promising framework for improving reading instruction. As defined by literacy experts, “Science of reading is not a method nor a curriculum nor an approach. It is a body of evidence based on decades of research that explains how the brain learns to read and the foundational skills that students need to become proficient readers.”
This evidence-based approach emphasizes “explicit, systematic instruction” in what is called “the foundational skills, which are phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, and oral language.” Rather than relying on context clues or memorization strategies, the Science of Reading recognizes that reading is not an innate skill—it must be deliberately taught through structured methods that align with how the brain processes language.
The success of the Science of Reading approaches has been demonstrated in several states, most notably Mississippi, which “went from being ranked 49th in ELA in 2013 to 21st in 2022” after implementing statewide literacy policies based on these principles. This dramatic improvement shows that with consistent application of evidence-based methods, significant progress is possible even in educational systems facing substantial challenges.
Implementing the Science of Reading approaches requires several key components, including “ongoing professional development for teachers, coaching, support for all principals, to ensure that literacy instruction is aligned with the science of reading, more intervention and support for students who have more challenges and closely monitoring data, and stronger family engagement practices and communication.”
The Role of Parents in Literacy Development: Partners in Learning
While schools bear significant responsibility for literacy instruction, parents play a crucial role in developing and reinforcing reading skills. As noted by Olga Corona de la Cruz, “While I know that it’s not on our families to ensure we’re learning to read, it is definitely a partnership between our school systems, our educators and our families, that helps young people and students to thrive and succeed.”
This partnership becomes even more vital during a literacy crisis. Parents who understand the fundamentals of reading development can better support their children’s learning journey, regardless of the instructional approaches used in school. When it comes to teaching letter sounds to kids, “research has shown that young children are 19 times more likely to learn using touchscreen apps with parent interaction.” This highlights how technology can enhance learning when combined with active parent involvement.
Effective parent support includes regular reading with children, focusing on foundational skills like letter recognition and phonemic awareness, and creating a print-rich environment at home. Parents can also advocate for evidence-based instruction at their children’s schools, particularly when they understand the components of effective reading instruction.
The Oakland Unified School District has demonstrated the power of parent involvement through its early literacy initiative, which trained and paid community members—including parents and grandparents—to support small groups of students in developing foundational literacy skills. One parent contrasted her child’s experience with her own: “I think back to when I was in school. If you were behind where the class was, you were really left behind, or if you were ahead, then maybe you were bored, and your mind was wandering, and you weren’t paying attention. I feel like with (early literacy tutors) … (students) get special time with an adult who is working with them. And I think that is really impactful.”
Parents can take several practical steps to support literacy development at home:
- Read aloud daily with your child, even for just 15 minutes
- Practice letter sounds and word blending through games and everyday activities
- Create a consistent routine that includes reading time
- Communicate regularly with teachers about your child’s progress and challenges
- Access resources like structured literacy apps that incorporate evidence-based approaches
Collaborative Solutions for the Literacy Crisis
When asked which group bears the most responsibility for solving the literacy crisis—school districts, lawmakers, parents, or community partners—Olga Corona de la Cruz offers a perspective that encapsulates the path forward: “We all have a role to play. This education system is so intertwined. And everyone that is impacted has an opportunity to play a role, whether it is parents advocating for their children, the district continuing to support evidence-based instruction, and then at the state level, enacting policy change that will support all of this work. This is really a problem with a responsibility that falls on all of us.”
This collaborative approach recognizes that no single intervention can address the complex factors contributing to declining reading scores. Schools can adopt evidence-based literacy instruction while policymakers ensure adequate funding and support for proven programs. Simultaneously, parents and community members can reinforce reading skills at home and advocate for effective educational practices.
The Oakland Unified School District’s “all hands on deck” approach offers a promising model, leveraging “eight classroom teachers, two tutors, and two non-classroom educators to ensure that every student was getting the targeted literacy instruction they needed” (EdSource, 2024). This strategy acknowledges that traditional classroom structures—with one teacher responsible for all students regardless of their needs—may be insufficient to address the current crisis.
Technology can also play a vital role in supporting literacy development. Educational apps designed with evidence-based principles can provide structured practice opportunities that reinforce classroom instruction. The most effective digital tools are those that complement rather than replace human instruction and that involve parents in the learning process.
The literacy crisis facing our nation is severe, with reading scores at their lowest point in decades. Yet the research is clear that with systematic, evidence-based instruction, appropriate support structures, and active parent involvement, children can develop the reading skills they need to succeed. As Robin Lake observed about the NAEP scores, “Hope is not a strategy for fixing them”—but informed, collaborative action certainly is.
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