[Header Photo by Iana Dmytrenko on Unsplash]

Thomas, P.L. (2025, July 28). There is no literacy crisis in the U.S. Here’s what’s really happening. The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/474j758

The evidence/links in the articles:

• U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon posted this apparently uncontroversial claim on social media
• Emily Hanford popularized the current “crisis” in her article “Hard Words”
• New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof repeated that statistic
• Fact Check: Linda McMahon’s claim that 70% of 8th-graders ‘can’t read proficiently’ lacks a bit of reading comprehension
• National Assessment of Educational Progress
• According to the NAEP
• In 2022, 45 states set their standard for reading proficiency in the NAEP’s “basic” range
• In 2004, an analysis by the American Federation of Teachers raised concerns about the NAEP’s achievement levels
• Literacy and NAEP Proficient
• The opportunity gap
• For over three decades, one-third of students have been below NAEP “basic”
• Age-level proficiency
• Britain, where phonics instruction has been policy since 2006
• Annual phonics assessments show score increases by birth month
• Age-Related Expectations?
• In the United States, only the NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment is age-based
• A Critical Examination of Grade Retention as Reading Policy (OEA)
• Resolution on Mandatory Grade Retention and High-Stakes Testing
• The Effects of Early Literacy Policies on Student Achievement
• For example, third-grade retention states such as Mississippi and Florida had exceptional NAEP reading scores among fourth-graders but scores fell back into the bottom 25 percent of all states among eighth-graders
• “A lot of states were doing it”: The development of Michigan’s Read by Grade Three Law

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