Graduated, but can't read properly: How America's schools are failing to teach reading

In classrooms across America, a quiet catastrophe is unfolding. One in four young adults, aged 16 to 24, cannot read beyond a basic paragraph. They can make sense of a menu, a short text, a road sign. But when words stretch into ideas, they falter. The data, released in December 2023 by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in partnership with the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), is unflinching. Between 2017 and 2023, the share of young adults reading at the lowest literacy levels jumped from 16% to 25%, a staggering rise in just six years. According to the American Institute for Research (AIR), that translates to about five million young Americans, roughly the population of Alabama, who cannot comprehend complex text despite years