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Illiteracy is a policy choice - by Kelsey Piper

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This month, the Department of Education released its latest edition of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the standardized tests better known as the Nation’s Report Card. The results have left me blazing with rage. In my home state of California, for instance, only 30% of public school fourth graders can read proficiently. Fully 41% cannot even read at a basic level — which is to say, they cannot really understand and interpret written text at all. Eighth graders, as you might expect, look almost as bad. These numbers have been tumbling downhill in California and more widely across the U.S. for years now, and not just because of school closures during the pandemic. Nationwide, reading scores for fourth graders peaked back in 2015, and while the especially ugly 2022 outcomes were dismissed at first as COVID-19 outliers, scores have fallen further since. The decline is the worst for the kids who were already struggling; the test scores of the bottom 10% of students have dro

Illiteracy is a policy choice Why aren’t we gathering behind Mississippi’s banner? Kelsey Piper Sep 25, 2025 ∙ Paid 568 49 137 Share Many schools are reintroducing phonics-based reading programs, but that is just one policy change driving the “Mississippi Miracle.” (Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images) This month, the Department of Education released its latest edition of the National Assessment of Educational Progress , the standardized tests better known as … Keep reading with a 7-day free trial Subscribe to The Argument to keep reading this post and get 7 days of f

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