Rif Our Impact On The U S Literacy Crisis

Leo Migdal

-Dec 12, 2025, 9:43 AM

rif our impact on the u s literacy crisis

According to studies by the National Literacy Institute in 2024, 21% of American adults are illiterate. The National Assessment for Adult Literacy found the literacy rate for American adults in 1870 was a gross total of 11.5% from census data. In 1979, that number was at 0.4%. With most early estimations for literacy and education heading into the 21st century pointing towards an even further downwards trend of illiteracy, we are seeing the highest rates in 155 years. In a study done by the Kutest Kids Early Intervention organization, illiteracy accounts for $2.2 trillion dollars in taxpayer losses throughout the year. These losses come in the form of welfare, unemployment and incarceration rates; three out of every four welfare recipients are unable to read, 50% of the unemployed between 16 and 21 years old are...

Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) | November 17, 2023 Across the nation, children are well on their way with the new school year – learning, exploring, and building friendships. It’s a welcome return to normalcy after schools and families have navigated (and continue to navigate) the many challenges and long-term effects of the pandemic. And while we know we’ve come a long way, we have to recognize a difficult reality: there is a literacy crisis in America that has been deeply exacerbated by the pandemic. Recent results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the nation’s report card, indicate reading scores are at a 30-year low. This data confirms our worst fears about the impact of the pandemic on our nation’s children and demonstrates the urgency to rally together and take action.

For nearly six decades, Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) has been working tirelessly to provide books and reading resources to children, inspiring the joy of reading, and putting children on a path to reading proficiency. We work to ensure that every child has the opportunity to learn, discover, and achieve their full potential. During this season of gratitude, we are more thankful than ever to our many supporters and partners who have enabled our work to support and empower educators, families, and children. And now is the time to come together for our nation’s young readers and join with RIF to inspire the joy of reading to build a nation of lifelong readers. Together, we can create a nation of skilled readers and ensure that all children are on a path to read and succeed. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the world – but especially the United States – has been plagued by stunning decreases in literacy and comprehension among students.

The 2025 National Report Card index displayed the lowest levels of literacy since 1992, with a widening gap between the best and worst performing students. The pandemic confining students to a precarious learning environment and failures to adjust likely form part of this phenomenon, but could there be a deeper institutional cause? Throughout the 2000s up to the mid-2010s, the state of Mississippi consistently placed last in education, literacy and reading comprehension in national experiments. This phenomenon was so renowned that it coined a jeering phrase across other low-scoring states: “Thank god for Mississippi!” In recent years, however, there’s been a turnaround which some have called the “Mississippi Miracle”. The reintroduction of phonics-based education caused Mississippi to jump from the 49th worst state for student reading comprehension, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2013, to the 21st best in 2022. Phonics is the practice of teaching children language by having them sound out parts of a word as they write to build a connection between the spoken word and the written language at an...

Among educators, there’s been a longstanding debate over whether phonics or “whole language” practices, which is the notion that language is a maturational feature that comes naturally to humans and doesn’t need to be... Around the 1990s, many schools abandoned phonics in favor of the more concise whole language approach, but ever-worsening reading scores indicate they made the wrong gamble. There have been a myriad of consequences of “whole language” learning: students struggling to transfer the written word to their brains develop limited capacity for reading or understanding texts, hindering academic performance later in... If a child declares that they hate reading, it might be because their teachers have failed to provide them with the capacity to understand the text. This has also negatively impacted media literacy, as if one struggles to transfer the latent text to their conscious mind, how can they pick up on deeper themes, literary conventions, or subliminal meanings in... Challenges to literacy have also shown themselves in changes to everyday speech.

Various malapropisms have become mainstream in not only online discourse but even esteemed publications. The word “infamous”, which refers to someone or something well known for negative qualities, has seen interchangeable use with its antonym “famous”. The word “bemused” has been used as a synonym for “amused”, when it’s actually a synonym of “confused”. In August of this year, the magazine Variety had to delete a tweet reading that “Guillermo del Toro casted Jacob Elordi as Frankenstein” following a cavalcade of tweets bemoaning the increasing use of the... WASHINGTON, DC – Literacy opens the door for lifelong opportunity and economic success. To make sure this door is open to every child, U.S.

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) and U.S. Representative Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ-07) introduced the Right to Read Act, which will close gaps in access to school library resources and surge federal investment in support of increasing student literacy across America. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, reading scores for American nine-year-olds have dropped to their lowest point since 1990. Research consistently shows that access to school libraries makes a big difference in giving kids the skills and inspiration they need to become proficient and enthusiastic readers. Students who utilize their school libraries have 73 percent higher literacy rates than their peers who do not. However, not every student has access to a school library or school librarian.

The Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics reports that about 8,830 public schools across America do not have a school library. For schools that do, nearly 17,000 do not have a full- or part-time librarian. Vulnerable students face even greater disadvantages in accessing strong school library programs, with students experiencing the highest levels of poverty being 30 percent more likely to not have a school library at all. School libraries are most effective when they offer resources that resonate, engage, and empower students. Yet, during the 2024-2025 school year, PEN America recorded 6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 public school districts. Since 2021, the organization has tracked nearly 23,000 book bans in public schools.

Frederick Douglass said, “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” This was true in the 19thcentury, when he was decrying the notion that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function... There is currently a literacy crisis happening in the U.S., one that disproportionately affects students of color, and that cannot be ignored. Literacy is one of the major civil rights issues of our time, and our children’s future — and our nation’s democracy — depends on us addressing it now. There is overwhelming evidence that nearly all children can learn to read. But in schools across the country, many students — especially students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities — are not yet skillful readers. Last year, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), “the nation’s report card,” showed that not even half (43%) of fourth graders in the U.S.

scored at or above a proficient level in reading. And for marginalized students, the numbers are much worse: just 17% of Black students, 21% of Latino students, 11% of student with disabilities, and 10% of multilingual learners can read proficiently by fourth grade. That any child, let alone the majority of children, goes to school without being taught to read is deeply concerning — and also completely preventable. There are five widely accepted components that are essential to reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Decades of research shows that when students receive explicit and systematic instruction across all of these domains, they will learn to read. And when students are given access to texts with rich, diverse characters and cultures, seeing people like themselves fully represented in school materials, they will become more engaged readers.

So why do we see staggering numbers of children, especially children of color and children from low-income backgrounds, without fundamental literacy skills? In many districts and schools, outdated teaching methods and curricula that have been proven ineffective, and even harmful, are still being used. Adding to this problem is that too many teachers enter the profession without any training in evidence-based reading instruction, which means they lack the knowledge to effectively teach their students how to read. Plus, there are unfounded and deeply entrenched ideas about how children learn to read that have had a reverberating and far-reaching impact — which have been expertly documented in Emily Hanford’s podcast, Sold a... To make things worse, the wave of states and districts taking steps to restrict the teaching of so-called critical race theory (CRT), ban books, and censor the ways race can be discussed in schools... New York (December 9, 2025) — David Shelley, CEO of Hachette Book Group (HBG) and Hachette UK announced today a $200,000 investment to its Raising Readers campaign to combat the growing decline in children’s...

This contribution also commemorates the 200th anniversary of Hachette’s parent company, Hachette Livre, which was founded in 1826 in Paris. HBG is proud to celebrate this significant literary milestone, as Hachette Livre has published many masterpieces from more than 200 imprints worldwide, each with its own rich history. “In 2026, we aim to take Raising Readers to the next level. 2026 serendipitously marks the 200th anniversary of Hachette Livre. Milestones like this are often celebrated internally, but given the urgency of the reading crisis, I believe the most meaningful way to mark the bicentenary is to invest more deeply in Raising Readers,” said... HBG’s $200,000 Raising Readers fund will be dedicated to social impact initiatives embedded within its urgent and long-term Raising Readers campaign.

Raising Readers strives to raise awareness of the decline in the number of children reading for fun and encourages everyone to make reading for enjoyment part of children’s daily lives. Reading for fun impacts academic results, mental health, wealth, communication skills, happiness, and ambition. As a part of the campaign, HBG’s 2026 philanthropic initiatives include: In addition to the above actions, investments will be made toward evidence-based literacy programs that measurably improve reading proficiency via structured tutoring, classroom literacy coaching, family literacy, community library rebuilds, or community programs that...

Rif Our Impact On The U S Literacy Crisis

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