The number of 16-to-24 year olds reading at the lowest literacy levels increased from 16% in 2017 to 25% in 2023, according to from the National Center for Education Statistics in partnership with the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies. 

In 2023, a total of about five million young adults, equivalent to the population of Alabama, could understand the basic meaning of short texts but could not analyze long reading materials, according to further analysis by the American Institute of Research.

The is in line with an unprecedented decline in the literacy rate among all adults in the same six-year period. 

But even more troubling is the AIR researchers’ finding that while the percentage of young adults with high school diplomas increased from 50% to 55% between 2017 and 2023, that group also saw the largest decrease in scores on tests measuring literacy skills compared to older adults with diplomas. 

“We know that over 20% of (young adults) that get their high school diploma do not have the skills commensurate with that,” said Sharon Bonney, chief executive officer of the Coalition on Adult Basic Education, a national adult education nonprofit. “So, when we have this ‘’ agenda, but people can’t read, write, speak the language or do math, they can’t get good jobs and better jobs. They can’t be skilled up.”  

Education experts in functional illiteracy in part on poverty and housing instability, a growing population of students with high needs and the pandemic shutdown of schools, which affected some of those in the 16 to 24 year old group. Many adult education programs were also shuttered during the pandemic.

But researchers also believe the data may point to more troubling trends among young adults: students increasingly passed through their school years without acquiring needed skills, a disconnect with curriculum — and a changing standard of what level of literacy is needed now that technology can provide information without most people having to think twice about it. 

“When you talk about literacy, what are we talking about? Is it reading, writing, filling out forms? Or really understanding and critically questioning what it is we’re consuming?” said Limor Pinhasi-Vittorio, professor and department chair of counseling, leadership, literacy and special education at  Lehman College in the Bronx. Because the latter “for sure is gone for the majority of the adult population.”

Adult literacy levels are measured through a test where individuals score on a zero to 500 point system. The scores are then grouped on a scale of one to five. Readers at level one and below only understand basic, and explicit, short texts such as reading a menu at a restaurant. At the highest literacy level it includes the ability to critically evaluate, infer and dissect complex ideas in written material. 

‘They’re pushed through’

Most efforts to improve literacy have centered on early intervention before third grade, as a student’s reading level at that age is viewed as of their future success. 

have implemented legislation for evidence-based reading instruction. Initial K-3 efforts appear promising, including in Indiana where test scores show younger students making gains and bouncing back from the pandemic. But, there’s still concern about older students who were in the early grades during the pandemic and may not have gotten help and are still struggling. 

“The most effective literacy instruction is still one-on-one or small group instruction, and that’s very difficult to do at scale in the K-12 system,” said Andrew Roberts, president of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. “So if you have some of those background skills, you’re able to get where you need to get, but if you’re struggling, …  that’s where we see people really fall off that cliff.”

Curriculum changes from a “learning to read” model after third grade to “reading to learn” through high school, many experts said, and if a student is behind from the beginning, it’s almost impossible to catch up.

The numbers by show the results can be devastating.  

For example, in Star County in southern Texas and Adams County in central Washington state, more than 80% of high school graduates are reading at level one or below. In countless other counties across the country, the level one literacy rate for high school graduates is higher than 60%.

“In high schools, oftentimes [students] do get pushed along,” Bonney said. “If we’re seeing in one county that [functional illiteracy is] super high, then to me, that says that the school system has a real issue – like why are they pushing students along that don’t have skills?” 

Some literacy advocates believe that passing a student through grades can be part of a more intentional effort to , but there’s also a belief that it’s a product of strained classrooms and a student’s ability to fly under the radar.

“Every couple decades, we’re changing the style of teaching but the problem is the same,” Pinhasi-Vittorio said. “I’m not only talking about money, but populations that have the resources … to help the students, they will be able to. But, in areas that they don’t, they’re falling between the cracks.”

When students fall between the cracks, they also get resourceful, Roberts added. 

“They find ways to hide the fact that they don’t read that strongly. … We find adults who have gotten into their 30s and struggle with reading, and people close to them don’t even fully know,” Roberts said. “There’s a lot of coping mechanisms that allow people to get by, maybe not getting by with As on their report card, but getting by enough that they’re passing through the system — friends doing homework for them — all these types of things.”

How literacy is changing 

Researchers view literacy as a spectrum that goes beyond knowing the basic skills of reading and writing. After students grasp foundational reading skills, the next levels of literacy develop through practice — which some kids aren’t getting because they don’t connect to their lessons. Easy access to online sources and AI also means they don’t really have to engage with the written word deeply anymore. 

Pinhasi-Vittorio recalls when she was in school, she had to read through a set of Britannica Encyclopedias for research papers. Now, however, “you don’t even need to read and write.”

“You can just read it to the computer or the phone and the phone will write it down,” Pinhasi-Vittorio said, adding that technology has changed the way students process information. 

Students take what they get from internet searches at surface level without disseminating it. “My concern is that we are skipping one step,” Pinhasi-Vittorio said. “The teaching needs to be different.… We need to build attention with students which we didn’t have to do before.”

Rebuilding student interest into their lessons is part of the issue.

“A lot of the low functioning literacy is stemming from connectivity,” she said. Students don’t deep dive into topics they don’t care about. They stop paying attention and don’t connect to their reading when they think what they’re learning in the classroom doesn’t have any “relevancy to their lives.”

Literacy skills can often be concentrated in topics that a student cares about or areas that play a role outside of school. For example, a student could be “very literate” in a church environment and able to dissect the Bible, but struggle when it’s a text in the classroom, said Rachael Gabriel, a literacy professor at the University of Connecticut.

“For kids graduating from high school, I think there are some texts that they have trouble with, and I think there are a lot of texts that they can read that we don’t care about,” Gabriel said. “Their literacy is very likely to extend far beyond what is tested, and it may or may not show up well on the way that we’ve been testing literacy for a long time.”

So by better adapting curricula and testing in a way that mirrors a student’s background and interests, measured literacy levels will improve, Gabriel argued.

“I think the goal is just awareness and flexibility of how texts are changing across all the different contexts, where they want to be powerfully literate, where they want to be able to create and critique and participate,” she said. “It is important to teach skills explicitly, and if we teach them in a context that is relevant and engaging and has a real purpose in the world, kids learn faster and better.”

Researchers acknowledge the importance of having a baseline for literacy skills that all students should have, but how it is measured, can continue to improve.

“Literacy skills are really foundational building blocks for learning everything more complex,” said Marco Paccagnella, an analyst at Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development which manages the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. But, many assessments were “designed and conceptualized 10 years ago.”

“The tasks that are part of the assessments mostly reflect the demands on people back in the days. There’s always a tension between adapting the assessment based on what is required of people at a particular moment in time,” Paccagnella said. “So, yes, you can say people are less able to engage with longer texts and difficult texts, but that’s maybe also because they don’t really need to now because the way we consume written information has fundamentally changed.”

The push is already being put into action as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which was last changed in 2004, is expected to roll out to better measure literacy in different subject areas and disaggregate data further based on student background.

A belief that the worst is yet to come

The growth in low-literate adults wasn’t a surprise to many who have tracked reading levels throughout the years or who have worked with adult education programs. In fact, they expect the problem to get worse in upcoming years.

Federal funding for adult education, which had already been stagnant for over two decades, has played a major role in the fact that less than 3% of those who need the programs actually received services, ProPublica in 2022. Many programs have months long waitlists. 

“From 23-24, we saw 415,000 people-plus who could demonstrate additional achievement gains in literacy through outside programming. We saw over 80,000 people get their high school equivalency degree through adult programming,” Roberts said. “There are paths, but the funding level is just really low, and you’re not able to meet up the demand. It’s like a big spigot coming in and you’re kind of a small spigot going out with the people you’re able to serve.”

The programs are in further jeopardy after a recent proposal from the Trump administration called to end all federal funding for adult education programs with a $0 line item in the . 

“If kids are coming or graduating from high school with low reading skills and they don’t have access to educational opportunities as an adult to address those low skills,” said Todd Evans, senior director of programs at advocacy and literacy training nonprofit ProLiteracy, “that number will just keep growing and growing and growing.”

, Michigan Democrats are pushing legislation they say would make history curriculums in K-12 public schools more culturally inclusive.

The most significant bill would require all public school districts in the state to include at least one unit of instruction a year on the histories of African, Latino, Arab, and Native Americans, among other racial and cultural groups, in their curricula. The lessons would be included in existing history classes by the 2027-28 school year and cover the discrimination the groups have faced and their fights for civil rights.

Another bill would require all teachers in the state complete cultural competency training that covers issues like implicit bias and the importance of inclusion in education.

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“Amidst the recent national wave restricting what can be taught in classrooms, we have the opportunity now in Michigan to support and stand with teachers who want to do right by their students and teach comprehensive and accurate history,” Henry Duong, who leads , a campaign that has advocated for inclusive history instruction since 2022, said in a prepared statement.

Rep. Ranjeev Puri, a Democrat from Canton who co-sponsored the legislation, said the new curriculum goes beyond teaching history.

“We are fostering empathy, cultural awareness, and the critical thinking skills our students need to thrive in an interconnected world,” he said.

but failed to move forward.

Despite that, the proposed curriculum was piloted in some schools this year. The Michigan Department of Education, or MDE, also began developing guidelines for the curriculum this year.

Here is what the package of bills would do:

• Require school districts ensure existing history classes include at least one unit of instruction on the histories of African Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latino Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Caribbean Americans, Native Americans, Arab Americans, Chaldean Americans, North African Americans, and Jewish Americans. The requirement would begin in the 2027-28 school year and would apply to all public K-12 schools in the state.
• Require the lessons include contributions made by those communities, the discrimination they have faced, and advancements in their civil rights. The lessons would be crafted to be age appropriate.
• Call on the MDE to create instructional material that would be available to schools to use as guidelines for lessons.
• Require educators to receive cultural competency training, which would cover issues such as implicit bias, the importance of inclusion, and the struggles experienced by communities of color. The MDE would be required to create the professional development material and make it available to schools by June 2026.
• Require all educators who have contact with students to complete the training by the 2027-28 school year.
• Create a cultural history advisory board within the MDE to provide recommendations on the K-12 curriculum and professional development material. The members of the board would be appointed by the superintendent of public instruction and would include people from all of the communities represented in the proposed curriculum as well as educators, experts, and stakeholders.

Three of the bills in the package were introduced at the end of November in the Senate and the other three were introduced in the House this week. They have all been referred to education committees in the legislature.

The bills would need to clear several hurdles before becoming law by the end of the session.

Democrats are working to move their legislative priorities forward before the end of the year, .

The party’s other remaining legislative education goals include , , and .

This story was originally by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

The paper presented the findings of focus groups conducted during the spring and summer of 2020, compiling the perspectives of 105 Black teachers from across 12 states. Educators in the group had an average of 12 years of classroom experience, though some were newer to teaching and others were more veteran.

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The report offers key insights on how to build school environments that feel welcoming for Black educators, such as ensuring that curricula include the perspectives of historically underrepresented groups. The authors also recommend that leaders provide opportunities for teachers of color to participate in mentorship programs and focus groups to debrief their experiences, especially in schools with majority-white faculty, where Black, Indigenous, Hispanic or Asian educators may be one of just a few colleagues who share their racial identity.

The findings come at a crucial time, as Black teachers are leaving the profession at than many other groups due to myriad issues including professional isolation and burnout. Currently, about 7 percent of all teachers nationwide are Black compared to 15 percent of all students.

Research underscores the academic and social benefits that teachers of color deliver for young people of all races, but . Many experts point to teacher diversification as a , yet nationwide, 79 percent of educators remain white compared to only 47 percent of students. 

“We know that students of color, particularly Black students, if they have a Black teacher, they’re more likely to succeed in school,” Sharif El-Mekki, founder and CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development, told ����Ӱ��. But all too often, he noted, teachers of color are met with hostile work environments that leave them simultaneously overburdened and isolated — what he calls the “invisible tax” of being one of the few Black, Indigenous, Hispanic or Asian educators at their school.

The report co-published by El-Mekki’s team and Teach Plus points out numerous systemic reasons for the current teacher diversity gap. The often-celebrated 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case, for example, integrated U.S. students but not educators — spurring . Many of them were than their white peers because teaching, albeit in segregated schools, was one of the few professions widely available to African Americans with advanced degrees during Jim Crow. 

Today, teacher preparation programs continue to feed of white educators into the field, thanks in part to certification exams that ​​have long been the target of concerns for racial bias.

“The challenges to [boosting teacher diversity] are deeply embedded and calcified in our public schools,” said El-Mekki, who previously worked as an educator and principal in Philadelphia, in a . “Undoing them will require intentional and comprehensive effort by teachers, principals, district and state leaders.”

“Hiring people of color is not enough to create culturally affirming schools,” added Kyle Epps, a Philadelphia teacher cited in the report. “Schools need to have systems, programs, and curriculum in place whose main goals are to foster and celebrate people of color.”

Some first steps toward implementing such measures may be holding meetings and launching surveys through which parents can share their voices, teachers suggest.

“It is imperative that leaders cultivate a culture where families and communities have a platform to advocate for their kids and are given opportunities to play a role in decisions that impact learning and student success,” said Mississippi teacher leader Nicole Moore, who was also featured in the paper.

The group of Black educators who spoke to Teach Plus and the Center for Black Educator Development identified key recommendations for school leaders looking to foster more welcoming environments for their teachers of color. The paper includes practical resources such as for teachers to help examine their own biases and tools to deepen curricular materials with that relate to students’ own lived experiences.

“[The report] addresses not only what an affirming school culture looks like, but also provides clear and concise action steps teachers, educational leaders, and policymakers should take to transform school culture for Black teachers — in service of their students,” said Travis J. Bristol, assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a Teach Plus board member.

Similar action steps, however, have recently come under fire in classrooms and rowdy school board meetings across the country. As some schools have begun to acknowledge and discuss systemic racism in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, a nationwide backlash (El-Mekki calls it a “whitelash”) against the perceived propagation of critical race theory in education has put a target on activities like implicit bias trainings or books written by Black authors. In one Texas town, it even led teachers to wrap their own personal bookshelves in , as administrators cracked down on classroom collections.

That’s not stopping El-Mekki or the Center for Black Educator Development.

“This idea of policing … Black minds and Black intellectuals is nothing new,” he told ����Ӱ��. “Doing racial justice work takes courage and bravery.”

His organization will next month hold a conference to , who currently make up just 2 percent of all U.S. teachers. 

But dismantling racism in schools, he underscores, is everyone’s responsibility — white folks included.

“It’s part of being an educator,” said El-Mekki.

And lest the path toward improvement seems daunting, the report cites Arkansas educator Iesha Green, who reminds principals and officials that, for key guidance, they need look no further than their colleagues who show up to classrooms day after day.

“My advice for leaders who wish to create culturally affirming schools is to learn about the nuances of various cultures and then listen to and work collaboratively with the practitioners who know the students best—teachers,” she said.

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Historically, curricula and instruction were deemed high-quality without consideration for their responsiveness to students’ identities, cultures and languages, but we know now that identity-affirming education is effective education. To that end, instructional materials — and the professional learning associated with them — need to be examined, supplemented and, sometimes, revised to ensure all students can bring their unique experiences to learning. Children students are unique, resilient and adaptable to new environments. Shouldn’t their instruction be the same?

has shown that a focus on culturally responsive and sustaining education in professional learning shifts teacher mindsets and practice and, ultimately, leads to increases in student achievement. At Teaching Lab, we saw this borne out when we worked with 72 K-5 teachers from New York City’s District 11 in a virtual professional learning community that was designed to equip teachers to implement culturally responsive and sustaining education in their daily instruction. Specifically, they learned to use each of their students’ unique cultural identities and skill sets with the goal of improving achievement. In focus groups conducted after the series, participants reported that they realized their focus on culture before the session was superficial and limited to certain times, such as Black History Month. Now, they intend to plan their lessons from a culturally responsive and sustaining education lens, looking for opportunities to expose students to a variety of cultures and being aware of phrasing that may inhibit some students’ understanding, all while maintaining academic rigor and ensuring a feeling of joy in the classroom.

From our work integrating these principles into professional learning, here are several recommendations for teachers and school leaders to make this work successful.

• Advocate for and engage in time to build this knowledge, reflect on practice and consider how it can be applied. It takes time and effort for educators to understand what culturally responsive and sustaining education is, find ways to incorporate it into the curriculum and classroom and engage in proper followup. To give them this time, school leaders can organize collaborative book studies of works by experts and dedicate time during professional learning to reflect on instructional materials and practice, plan lessons with cultural responsiveness in mind and share experiences.
• Reflect on how your identities as a learner, educator and leader influence the ways you teach and lead and how your students learn. Teachers can use these reflections to craft a vision for the instructional experience in their classroom. For example, a math teacher can consider these questions:
  • All students have a mathematics identity — for example, they may see themselves as a capable math learner, or they may think they’re just not a “math person.” What range of mathematics identities do your students exhibit?
  • What actions do you take to positively affirm your students’ mathematics identities?
  • What aspects of your own history with learning mathematics have an impact on your views about teaching math?
• Integrate culturally responsive and sustaining education into your instructional practice, in any content area or set of high-quality instructional materials. Free, customizable open educational resources can be easily adapted to students’ needs and cultures. Leaders and teachers can also make it a habit in their lesson planning to reflect on cultural responsiveness. For example, an English language arts teacher can consider like, “What opportunities are there to connect this topic to students’ cultures?” while preparing for a module, unit or lesson. Teachers can also incorporate inclusive practices into instruction, such as assigning nonfiction books that build on students’ interests and giving them the option to sketch or doodle what they’re learning rather than writing or taking notes.

We must redefine “high quality” to include both academic rigor and cultural responsiveness — it’s not an either/or. To remove barriers for all students to succeed, education leaders need to invest time and resources to teach educators to support students to meet grade-level expectations through culturally responsive and sustaining education. When teachers and leaders do this, they create classroom environments where all students thrive and receive joyful and rigorous instruction that affirms their identities.

Vaishali Joshi is senior director of impact and innovations at Teaching Lab.