U.S. literacy crisis keeps getting worse

Education experts are growing alarmed by the steady decline over the past decade in U.S. students’ reading scores, which continue to lag behind those of their peers in several parts of Asia and Europe.

According to the results of the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a global test measuring 15-year-old students’ performances in reading, math, and science in industrialized countries, American students were outperformed by counterparts in nations including Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Estonia, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

The pattern mirrors the global trend.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, U.S. students’ reading test scores continue to drop, a trend that started before the pandemic. Reading test scores have trended downward since 2013 for eighth graders and since 2015 for fourth graders.

The decline has reached a tipping point, said Phil Capin, assistant professor of education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. But it is fixable.

“We should be more concerned about this now more than ever,” said Capin. “At this point, there is pretty overwhelming evidence from the PISA results, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the United States, and from other national and international sources of reading data, that too many of our students are reading at or below proficiency levels.”

Experts agree that the slide mirrors a decline in reading itself. It is a phenomenon that has myriad causes, including pandemic disruption, chronic student absenteeism, fewer resources to support struggling readers, and the rise of smartphone technology and artificial intelligence.

“There are reasons to worry that this will get worse before it gets better,” said Capin. “Outside of school, smartphones are taking opportunities away from children to read and take part in other more literacy-rich activities. We’re seeing less reading for pleasure among children, but also adults. And AI, when used inappropriately, replaces opportunities to read and write, which are critical to the type of deep, rational thinking that democracy depends on.”

For Paola Uccelli, John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, the situation amounts to a national and global crisis that affects both children and adults, in the U.S. and around the world.

“We have a literacy crisis in the United States,” said Uccelli, an expert in reading and language. “But this is truly a global literacy crisis that needs to be understood both as an instructional problem and a broader societal problem.”

The heart of the problem is that too many read too little.

“Reading doesn’t happen only in school,” Uccelli said. “It happens outside of school too. The kids who read for fun almost every day and the kids who miss no days of school score the highest in our national reading assessments. Yet today’s world does not invite most of us to engage in sustained reading.”

The number of children who read for fun outside of school is plummeting. In 2012, 27 percent of U.S. eighth-graders reported reading for fun almost every day. In 2025, the number fell to 14 percent.

To improve reading outcomes, global education expert Robert Jenkins, an Ed School lecturer, said it is necessary to focus on foundational learning in the lower grades.

“To be successful in school and meet learning levels when you are 15 years old, you had to have earlier support along your learning journey,” said Jenkins.

For some experts, the reading crisis may challenge the idea that literacy instruction ends in third grade, when the transition from learning-to-read to reading-to-learn takes place.

They are finding that while reading proficiency by that level is a crucial milestone, literacy instruction should continue into middle school. The 2024 Nation’s Report Card found that only 31 percent of U.S. fourth-graders were considered proficient or advanced readers.

“We used to think that literacy was the inoculation model, sort of if you teach kids to read fluently by third grade, they’ll be fine throughout school,” said Uccelli. “Now we know that reading continues to develop and needs support throughout the years because as the texts get more complex, the students will need more support, and teachers also need more support.”

In addition, the shift from students reading printed books and articles to doing much of it in short-form digital media like texts and social media posts is not helping children, said literacy specialist Pamela Mason. It can hamper the building of reading stamina, the ability to read at length, she said.

“If you’re struggling in elementary school and don’t like reading, you don’t read, and you don’t get better at it. It’s a downward spiral,” said Mason. “The other issue is that reading on screen doesn’t build your reading stamina. If you’re used to reading 25 words or short texts, and all of a sudden somebody hands you a 500-, 700-word text you’re supposed to read and comprehend, it becomes challenging.”

The reading crisis among the young is a fixable problem, said Capin, the reading specialist, but it requires a collective effort to implement effective programs and practices such as instituting school-based accountability, and offering universal pre-K, among others.

Experts note that declines in reading skills extend to adults.

A 2023 survey found that 28 percent of U.S. adults had low literacy proficiency, meaning “they can understand short texts, find specific information and identify relevant links,” and only 13 percent had high literacy skills and could “comprehend and evaluate long, dense texts across several pages, grasp complex or hidden meanings, and use prior knowledge to understand texts.”

The consequences of low literacy skills are substantial.

A report from the 2023 OECD survey found that “adults with low literacy skills are about one-third less likely to be active in the labor market, and those who work earn about $5 less per hour on average than adults with medium proficiency.”

It also found that adults with low literacy skills report worse health and lower life satisfaction.

In the age of social media and AI, which teems with misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda, reading proficiency is more important than ever at nearly every age, Capin said.

“Reading is not just reading the words on the page,” said Capin. “It’s critical that students have the foundational skills of reading the words and understanding what they mean, but also that they have the advanced literacy skills to read multiple sources of information on a topic, evaluate the trustworthiness of those sources, and make an informed judgment based on the evidence.”

The moment requires urgent action, he said.

“We are potentially entering a new phase of our relationship to reading as a society,” said Capin.