Crandi

Solving Utah S Literacy Crisis Opinion Deseret News

Leo Migdal
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solving utah s literacy crisis opinion deseret news

Christine is the co-founder of the Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation. She is the mother of five children and grandmother to seven children. Reading is no longer intuitive. We reach for phones instead of books. Less than half of Utah’s third grade students (48%) are reading on grade level, an astounding fact published by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

One out of two children in the state of Utah cannot read proficiently. For the past five years, that percentage has basically remained steady. Out of Utah’s 852 public schools this year, the Utah State Board of Education celebrated 60 schools that have achieved a reading rate of 70%. While this is a positive trend, all of our schools should at the very least hit this minimum requirement. This quiet reading crisis in our state and across the nation will eventually explode into unskilled workers faced with limited possibilities. National data shows that only 31% of students are reading at or above grade level.

An illiterate population will cost our state and our nation financially and fundamentally. Life will change for all of us if more than half our citizens can no longer read. A literate workforce has long been the propelling force of America’s middle class. Our democracy relies on literate people who can think and reason for themselves. Impending AI and illiteracy is a combination that will be difficult to weather. In my public school years, I knew a guy who was a year older than me.

We were in the same class because somewhere in the early grades, he had been held back a year. I was aware of this, although I can no longer remember how I knew it. I didn’t know the exact reason he was held back, or the subjects for which he was held back. It never mattered to me. We were friends and that was good enough. The subject didn’t come up.

This probably sounds very old-fashioned to today’s school-age generation (we were also paddled occasionally by the principal, but that’s another column for a different time). I didn’t grow up in Utah, but schools here and in most of the nation have, for years now, automatically passed kids to the next grade, regardless of how well they mastered subjects in... My ears perked last Tuesday when Gov. Spencer Cox told the Deseret News editorial board he would urge the Legislature next month to implement “retention,” as it’s known, for Utah third graders who haven’t learned to read on grade level. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox launched a campaign on Wednesday to boost the state’s stubbornly low third grade reading scores by hiring more teaching assistants and holding more students back who don’t read at grade level.

This carrot-and-stick approach mirrors some of the policies that are reportedly behind the “Mississippi Miracle,” which took the state from the bottom of national elementary literacy rankings to the top 10 over the past... “We’ve implemented some of the things that have happened in Mississippi. We need to implement the rest of those things and get everybody pulling together,” Cox said at the presentation of his Fiscal Year 2027 budget. The governor announced his multipronged literacy proposal at the Kearns Branch of the Salt Lake County Library on Wednesday before surprising local children by leading the library story time with first lady Abby Cox. In addition to trying to reverse Utah’s spike in chronic homelessness and the state’s shortage of affordable homes, Cox said his 2026 agenda will center around a “huge literacy push” aimed at young elementary... Sen.

Ann Millner: Building an Education Foundation for Utah Students One of the reasons I love being a professor is that I get a front row seat to students’ successes in and out of the classroom. I’ve watched students become contributing members of society and leaders in our community. I get to admire and observe how their creativity and contributions make Utah a better place to live. However, not all students are lucky enough to pursue such opportunities because they lack foundational skills developed early on in their education. One of those foundational skills is reading.

Reading is essential to ensuring every child has the opportunity to succeed. It promotes self-confidence, builds independence and boosts critical and creative thinking skills. As we head into a new school year, the Utah Legislature has taken steps to help students develop better reading abilities. Right now, 50% of students in Utah are not at grade-level reading by the third grade. Consequently, students who are unable to read proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely to leave school without a diploma. Not to mention, third grade literacy levels are a strong indicator of a student’s academic success or failure throughout the student’s education experience.

There is a common misconception about college; it’s not the parties, lectures or even tests. It’s that people actually do assigned readings. Typically buried in the “required content” section, textbooks and assigned readings stay relatively untouched for most students. Recent articles from news outlets, such as The Atlantic’s “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books,” paint a grim picture for the future of America’s literacy and comprehension. However, as a current university student, I have a different story to tell. We’ve reached a point where students no longer care to read their textbooks.

This is why 30% of students reported reading their textbooks compared with 85% of faculty expecting students to read the textbook. The disconnect between academics and their pupils is growing due to a lack of understanding on what a student needs in order to learn and absorb information. New forms of media such as podcasts, videos or articles should not be considered as less valuable than a book or textbook. Visual learning is in itself a form of comprehension, and data shows that the majority of students are visual learners. In order to understand students' needs and how they can best learn, we have to accommodate, not criticize. The use of tools that emphasize speaking and listening over reading don’t signal the end of literacy; they signal a change in how students want to learn.

This is why academics who talk about a rise in shallow reading, the practice of students reading to gain information fast and efficiently, need to understand where students are coming from. The issue is college students are designed to be that type of learner, the fast learner. In order to keep up with massive textbooks assigned daily or weekly, the college student has no choice but to revert to the shallow reader. When in reality, faster learning is not better learning. The difference in expectations and reality between the student and the professor can be seen in data. According to the 2018 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, 97% of professors think it’s “important” or “very important” that students come to class having finished their reading, however, a minuscule 3% believe that students...

The straightforward takeaway that many have mistaken as the death of books and literacy is simply a caricature of the truth. The modern college student prefers information that is efficient and respects their time, which long readings have notoriously not done. While higher education is meant to be both mentally and academically challenging in order to grow skill, forms of media that fail to help students learn quicker should not be the primary content we... Students that prefer to be assigned Youtube videos do so because it opens up flexibility for studying and takes less time. Utah women are starting college in impressive numbers. In fact, we rank 22nd in the nation for the percentage of women with a postsecondary degree.

But there’s another ranking that tells a tougher story: Utah is the second highest in the nation for women who begin college but never finish their degrees. This isn’t just about dropout rates — it’s about opportunity lost. Every unfinished degree represents a woman who invested time, money and hope into her education only to walk away without the life-changing benefits that come from completing it. Finishing the degree matters. A college degree is linked to lower rates of domestic violence against women, greater access to health care, stronger financial stability and healthier lifestyles. These aren’t abstract outcomes — they affect families, marriages, workplaces and entire communities.

Here’s the catch: The greatest benefits don’t come from just attending college — they come from completing it. When women leave school early, they face the costs of college — time, debt and lost income — while missing out on many of the protections and opportunities a degree provides. In Utah, we pride ourselves on perseverance, diligence and finishing what we start, yet too many women are stopped short by challenges we can and should address: the tug of family responsibilities; financial pressures;... These pressures can make the finish line feel out of reach. I could not state this better: "𝘼𝙣 𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙥𝙤𝙥𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙘𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙛𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙖𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮." At the very least every elementary school student should be receiving a 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗿,... #newspapers #publishing #education #journalism State of Utah Brian Allfrey My thanks to Paul D.

Parkinson for sending this item along. https://lnkd.in/dHgGvdKD Utah remains one of the most literate states in the country, with an average of 9% illiterate compared to the national average of 14.7%. Literacy rates often reflect the quality of a state’s education system, which can have a notable impact on long-term success. However, there are nuances to the ways the scores are presented. The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) is a standardized assessment for fourth and eighth-graders that tests reading ability.

Katherine O’Donnell, an assistant professor in the Educational Psychology department’s Literacy, Language and Learning program, explained the potential flaws in NAEP’s data. “Utah tends to score higher in the U.S., which is great, but the struggle is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are hitting really high benchmarks,” O’Donnell said. “So it’s not like we’re having 75% of our students reading at proficient or above [standard levels]; it just means that we are doing better than other states.” Less than half of Utah children in grades 1-3 were reading at the expected grade level during the 2022-2023 school year. According to NAEP, the average score in the eighth grade had lowered by four points between 2022 and 2024. Additionally, 36% of Utah’s fourth graders are reading at or above the proficient level.

The Deseret News is the longest-running news organization in Utah and the state’s oldest continuously operating business. Assessing Utah students’ overall performance on a recent national test is akin to countless parent-teacher conference reports: doing well overall — but some areas need improvement. Earlier this week, results from The National Assessment of Educational Progress 2024 scores — aka “The Nation’s Report Card” — were released, revealing mostly steady performance for Utah fourth- and eighth-grade students who participated... In fact, only three states or jurisdictions outperformed Beehive State students. But the decline in Utah’s eighth grade reading scores — reflecting national trends in declining reading performances — caught the attention of the state’s education leaders. Reading is no longer intuitive.

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One out of two children in the state of Utah cannot read proficiently. For the past five years, that percentage has basically remained steady. Out of Utah’s 852 public schools this year, the Utah State Board of Education celebrated 60 schools that have achieved a reading rate of 70%. While this is a positive trend, all of our schools should at the very least hit this minimum requirement. This quie...

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This probably sounds very old-fashioned to today’s school-age generation (we were also paddled occasionally by the principal, but that’s another column for a different time). I didn’t grow up in Utah, but schools here and in most of the nation have, for years now, automatically passed kids to the next grade, regardless of how well they mastered subjects in... My ears perked last Tuesday when Gov. ...