Reading and writing levels are falling in public schools. Technology may be to blame

Laura Allen

When students’ scores began to dip following the COVID-19 lockdown, the pandemic was an obvious scapegoat. Afterall, nearly half of all public schools in the U.S. did not return to in- person learning until the fall of 2021, a year and half after the initial shutdown. Even with this setback, scores were expected to bounce back once students returned to school.

They didn’t. In fact, literacy rates are still on the decline. Parents and educators ask, why can’t their students read? Many educators say technology is to blame. Decreased reading time at home with parents and diminishing attention spans also factor into the issue. Dependency on technology has not only shortened students’ attention spans in the classroom, but also dampened their enthusiasm to read.

“Kids are not reading,” said Lucinda Matthew, 49, a literacy interventionist. “[At] one point,

technology was supposed to enhance learning. It’s actually hurting it.”

Over Matthew’s two decades as an elementary school teacher and two years as a literacy interventionist, she has seen an overall decline in reading comprehension and phonics skills. Matthew’s observations are reflective of a 2024 study done by The Nation’s Report Card, which found that only one-third of students in both fourth and eighth grade were reading at or above the NAEP Proficient reading level in 2022, three percentage points lower than in 2019, the previous assessment year.

Matthew said that because so many tests are now on the computer, students' learning can easily be disrupted by broken headphones, slow service or malfunctioning text-to-speech tools. Children are also spending more time than ever on technology outside of the school, which Matthew believes is a big reason why students’ interest in reading has taken a hit.

Bethandy Dowdy, an instructor in the College of Education at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana, echoed this sentiment. She cited her time as an elementary school teacher when she would see parents giving their children constant access to devices. “At carpool, you can see the parents handing over their phone or the Chromebook or the iPad or whatever to their child as soon as they get in the car,” Dowdy, 55, said. “So I really do think that that has had an effect on reading comprehension and, just across the board, the joy for reading.”

The impact of technology on students’ attention spans has been significant, and Dowdy and Matthew both agree that the instant gratification offered by these devices has lowered students’ interest in reading. “Some of the kids still don't have the stamina to sit there and listen to it, even if the paragraphs are being read aloud to them,” Matthew said. “Comprehension is not there because they're not interested.”

School-aged children overall have been reading less outside of school. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, 42% of 9-year-olds in 2020 reported reading for fun almost every day, an 11% decrease from 2012. Similarly, only 17% of 13-year-olds read for fun, a 10% drop from 2012 to 2020. However, this pessimism about the state of literacy in public schools is not the consensus of all educators. Dr. Jimmy Butts, a former English teacher and current LSU GeauxTeach English professor, strongly disagrees with the idea that literacy is on the decline.

“As an English professor, if I meet people out in the world, they’ll say, ‘Awe man, students can’t write anymore,’ and I just don’t think that’s true,” Butts said. “I think humans are writing more than they ever have in history.”

Butts believes the main reason why educators are not seeing enthusiasm in students is because of the transactional nature of schooling, which rewards correct answers and punishes incorrect answers without any room for mistakes.

“If education is a place where a mistake is the worst thing you can make, then it’s not education anymore,” said Butts. “You have to be able to make mistakes in order to learn.”

Still, most teachers agree that literacy is suffering.

Dr. Ashlynn Wittchow, an assistant professor of English education at LSU and former middle school teacher, believes the solution is to meet students where they are at.

“If we get to the point where you have students graduating from high school and they never pick up another book, that’s a problem. We have failed,” Wittchow said.

The roadblock that many educators have run into is that students simply have no drive to learn. Instead, they view education as transactional, doing the bare minimum to get the grade they want, but not actually retaining the information they learn.

“It's always been, get it done,” said Maxime Lefort, an 11th grade student. “‘Oh, I have to do

this,’ ‘this is something stupid that I have to do’ and ‘no, I got to do this when I get home.’”

A straight-A student enrolled in honors and AP classes, Lefort’s education is very important to him. Still, he is not immune to the same burnout his fellow classmates experience.

With this growing fatigue, students are looking for an easy way to get schoolwork done — technology is the obvious solution. “I think it's common and might be standard, just because it's the most efficient way of doing [homework] with the resources we have,” Lefort said, “even if the drawback is that you don't really connect with things.”

Lefort said he is normally on top of his schoolwork, but when life gets ahead of him and he misses a chapter of reading here and there, he turns to Sparknotes to give him a brief overview of what he missed. Contrary to what some may assume, Lefort does not feel that generative AI is a big issue in the classroom. He said that most students who use the technology are not using it to generate entire essays — mostly because teachers are able to run submissions through AI checkers — but instead to explain complicated topics or clarify homework questions.

Some students, however, do rely on AI to complete a bulk of their written assignments. Lefort said that a friend of his was worried his teacher would be able to tell from his in-class essay that he had been using AI based on the differences in writing style. “[He] was genuinely worried about actually having to write something in class for a timed essay because it wouldn't sound like what he normally writes,” Lefort said, “because he mostly uses AI.”

The media may paint AI as a bigger problem in schools than it is, but that is not to say that students are engaged with the material in class. Danielle Brady, a fifth grade teacher, said that her students are lacking foundational reading and writing skills.

“They cannot spell,” said Brady, 46.

More than these gaps in knowledge — including reading comprehension, punctuation and syntax — Brady’s students lack the motivation to learn.

“This year, I'm seeing they are completely apathetic,” said Brady. “I've had kids just not turning in assignments.” It is difficult for Brady to even give students the resources and attention they need when she herself is so confined by the school’s curriculum. Instead of creating spelling tests and other assignments that target weak points in students’ understanding, Brady must teach material that will specifically be on the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program, or LEAP, test at the end of the year.

“Teaching to a test” is when educators drill the information that will be on an assessment into students; heads so they will perform well. Rather than providing a well-rounded, nuanced understanding of these topics, teaching to a test promotes short-term memorization. Teachers are not teaching to a test for no reason, though. Standardized tests like LEAP do not impact the students’ gradebooks, but are rather used to evaluate teacher performance. The higher the overall scores, the more government funding that school receives.

“If your kids don't score well enough, then obviously you're a horrible teacher,” said Brady.

“That's what it is. And the reason why the schools want the scores to be so well is so they can get their money from the government.”

Standardized testing is often used as the biggest indicator of student performance across grade levels, but according to Brady, it is impossible for these assessments to give an accurate read on students’ actual literacy levels because educators have a vested interest in making sure that students basically know the answers. Because the dip in literacy rates is so obscured by standardized testing scores, parents may be

unaware of how serious the situation is.

Still, student success in the classroom is largely dependent on parental involvement outside of the classroom — the more involved a parent is in supplementing reading outside of school, the higher their child will perform.

“I think reading a book one-on-one with a family member or teacher, or working on things like that, has a better impact than the Chromebooks,” said Courtney Curtis, 33, a kindergarten teacher.

If parents take a more active role in their children’s education, they might be able to stem the over-reliance on technology, cultivate longer attention spans and motivate their children to try harder in school.

“Most of my parents who I told their child was struggling, once they got on board with me and kind of worked with me, I saw growth in those kids,” Matthew said. “You have to work together. You have to because … at the end of the day, we are here for the kids.”