American students’ reading skills keep slipping, and education researchers at Harvard say the slide has reached a tipping point. They also say it can be reversed.
In a Harvard Gazette report published Oct. 29, faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education laid out the scope of the problem and what they think would help.
The numbers
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, U.S. reading scores have trended downward since 2013 for eighth graders and since 2015 for fourth graders, a slide that began before the pandemic. The 2024 Nation’s Report Card found only 31% of fourth graders reading at the proficient or advanced level.
Internationally, U.S. 15-year-olds were outperformed in reading on the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) by students in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Estonia, Australia and the United Kingdom, the Gazette reported.
“We should be more concerned about this now more than ever,” said Phil Capin, an assistant professor of education. “Too many of our students are reading at or below proficiency levels.”
Kids are reading less
The experts tie the decline to a drop in reading itself, driven by pandemic disruption, chronic absenteeism, fewer resources for struggling readers, smartphones and artificial intelligence. In 2012, 27% of U.S. eighth graders said they read for fun almost every day. In 2025, 14% did.
“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,” said Paola Uccelli, the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education. “Yet today’s world does not invite most of us to engage in sustained reading.”
Literacy specialist Pamela Mason said short-form reading on screens does not build 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,” she said.
What would help
Capin said the problem is fixable but requires a collective effort, including school-based accountability and universal pre-K. Ed School lecturer Robert Jenkins said the focus should be on foundational learning in the early grades.
Uccelli said reading instruction also needs to continue past third grade. “We used to think that literacy was the inoculation model,” she said. “Now we know that reading continues to develop and needs support throughout the years.”
Adults too
The Gazette cited a 2023 survey that found 28% of U.S. adults had low literacy proficiency and only 13% had high literacy skills. An OECD report from that survey found 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.