Why America’s Kids Still Can’t Read

It’s Failure Season again — that grim American ritual when the reading scores trickle in, the headlines scream, and the public pretends to be shocked. “Literacy Plummets!” “Kids Can’t Read!” “Scores at All-Time Low!” You’ll see them in the coming weeks — just like last year, and the year before, and the year before that. The headlines change their fonts, but not their message. The problem festers. The solutions get fancier. And the kids keep drowning.

For years, those kids were just statistics to me — an abstract tragedy I tracked through policy reports and conference panels, one more grim line on America’s long, slow descent into dysfunction. I wrote about it, worried about it, shook my head at it — then went about my day. It wasn’t personal.

MO

About the Author

Marc Oestreich

Marc Oestreich is an education and energy policy consultant and strategist at Crane + Grey.

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It’s Failure Season again — that grim American ritual when the reading scores trickle in, the headlines scream, and the public pretends to be shocked. “Literacy Plummets!” “Kids Can’t Read!” “Scores at All-Time Low!” You’ll see them in the coming weeks — just like last year, and the year before, and the year before that. The headlines change their fonts, but not their message. The problem festers. The solutions get fancier. And the kids keep drowning.

For years, those kids were just statistics to me — an abstract tragedy I tracked through policy reports and conference panels, one more grim line on America’s long, slow descent into dysfunction. I wrote about it, worried about it, shook my head at it — then went about my day. It wasn’t personal.