################################################################# # Lines beginning with '#' are ignored (like this one) # All line not beginning w/ '#' are Title, Subtitle, Image, and Article text # # NOTE: # author and date are determined by where and when uploaded # # INSTRUCTIONS: # Image must be alone on a line, and must end iwth '.jpg' or '.png' # First non-comment line that is not an image # must be title (goes where 'title-here' is found in template) # Second non-comment line that is not an image # must be subtitle or a dash "-" (replaces 'subtitle-here') # All remaining text is content (replaces 'article-here'), except that an Image # line with nothing else on the line is recognized (replaces 'image-here') # Also: # P: -- creates a publisher name other than 'Ed Lede' # P:- -- no publisher name # A: -- overrides auto generated author # A:- -- no author name ################################################################# PISA Reading Scores Dropped by a Whopping 14 Points Since 2022 Some choose to celebrate relative ranking improvement rather than address the reading crisis fillingouttestform.jpg # There is a well-known story of the father who had several boys. He worried about two of them, one a lugubrious pessimist and the other a manic optimist. The father felt he needed to take action to set these two sons on a path for success, so he took them to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist worked first with the pessimist, taking him into a room full of toys, hoping to remind the boy that the world can be full of delight. The boy began to cry. "Why on earth are you crying? You can play with any of these toys that you like," the doctor explained. "I would," the sobbing boy explained, "but I'm sure I'll just break them." Frustrated, the psychiatrist turned his attention to the effervescent optimist son. He took him to a room piled near to the ceiling with manure. "You can play in here for awhile," he encouraged the boy, expecting to dampen the boy's enthusiasm a bit. To the psychiatrist's surprise, the boy ran into the room, squealing with delight, scaled the pile, and began to scoop through the manure. "Why are you so happy, son?" the psychiatrist inquired. The boy exclaimed, still digging, still gleeful, "With all this manure, there's gotta be a pony in here somewhere!" The PISA test (Programme for International Student Assessment) is an international study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It is designed to assess how well 15-year-old students in grade 7 or above can apply knowledge and skills in reading, mathematics, and science to real-world situations. The PISA exam was first given in 2000 and is administered every 3 to 4 years. 3 years is the target interval. Each three-year cycle has as a focus one of those areas. The PISA exam allows participating countries and education systems to compare student performance and examine factors associated with academic outcomes. For the 2022 PISA test, the focus area was reading. The focus area was science for 2025. The spoiler is in the title. The US reading score on the PISA exam dropped a whopping 14 points, after remaining relatively flat between the 2000 test results and the 2022 results. All three core subjects of the PISA test are tested every cycle. So one can compare US reading scores between the 2022 and 2025 exams, even though reading is not the focus area for both tests. So, where's the energetic dialogue around what we can do to reverse this reading proficiency decline clearly indicated by the test? In most of the mainstream education publications, such dialogue is nowhere to be found. Telling is the fact that some press has instead simply celebrated our increase in ranking among the participating nations. Certainly, more critical thinkers in the press have rightfully pointed out that our rise in the ranings is largely due to greater losses in achievement by other countries that were previously ahead of us. But this perpetual disposition of the education establishment to find "the pony in here somewhere" rather than identify the crisis and face it, is an injustice to American families, and a betrayal of the upcoming generation. Students of age 15 taking the test in 2025 were likely in grade 3 during the pandemic. The data has historically shown that failure to reach grade-level reading skills by grade 3 is a strong predictor of academic challenge throughout school. An easy dismissal will be afforded the education establishment by way of the all-too-prevalent disavowal of relevance to larger trends due to the COVID-19 pandemic incursion. This isn't just data. It is the quality of children's lives that is at stake. And if it were only a 3-year aberration, then reading performance should be largely recovered. It isn't. Effort to close the reading proficiency gap for older students, as well as early students for whom much more reading proficiency focus is given, is desperately needed. It is time for educators to stop finding (and focusing on) the bright spot in each new report on reading and mathematics declines. We need a real conversation about why substantial reading proficiency improvement is not being seen, and academic decline continues to be the norm. Parents blame schools, teachers blame parents, and all the while, too many students are spending more time scrolling on social media and playing video games. The solution most assuredly requires home effort. A YouGov survey found that 41% of US adults did not read a single book in 2025. Parents who enjoy reading are much more likely to have children who enjoy reading. Even more directly relevant, a HarperCollins survey determined that the percentage of parents who read to their young children declined markedly (a 15% decline) since 2012. The decline of parents reading to children alone likely accounts for much of the reading proficiency decline. Not unrelated, research shows that children with stable home environments with two parents demonstrate greater reading proficiency. With single parent families on the rise in the United States, this is another pressure toward the decline of student reading achievement. Yet the social agendas being promulgated in our public schools undermine family values, encourage children to reject the moral frameworks of their homes, and are driving the disintegration of the nuclear family in America. This maligning of traditional family structure is increasingly relegating children to homes with less stability, to a parent with little time to work with the child, and to transitory adult realtionships through their early school years, when a stable home with active parent support is critically needed. It's time for educators to take up the work of creatively and resolutely recognizing and solving the reading proficiency crisis in America. They must actively work with parents, respect the home, and help bring all three parties -- student, parents, and school into the effort. Focus on the reading crisis. Perhaps a good first step is to admit what's in the box, rather than searching for "the pony in here somewhere".