EDUCATORS SOUND THE ALARM OVER “READING RECESSION”

Educators are sounding the alarm over what’s being described as a “reading recession” following the results of a nationwide Education Scorecard conducted by scholars at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth. The scorecard found that only five states plus the District of Columbia had meaningful growth in reading test scores from 2022 to 2025 and that students overall remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading scores. Harvard Professor Tom Kane explains that a combination of factors lead to the decline in reading scores, including the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic which hit “at the time that social media was setting fire to students’ learning time outside of school.” For some of the school districts that are seeing improvements in reading scores, the key has been a new focus on the “science of reading.” “We’re going back to the basics,” says Chandler Smith, the Superintendent of West Baton Rouge Parish School System in Louisiana. “We’ve gone back to phonics. We’ve gone back to a foundational approach to learning to read. Having kids decode the phonemic awareness, building their understanding of sounds, letter sounds, how those sounds blend.” Correspondent Leigh Waldman has all the details, including how parents and grandparents can best help their young learners, in a 3pET PKG with FREE custom talkbacks from New York City.