Forty-three years have passed since the National Commission on Excellence in Education published a report titled “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.”
Perhaps a modern version of that prescient report would be titled “A world at risk.”
The Program for International Student Assessment, better known by its acronym PISA, released its latest report this week, measuring the academic performance of 15-year-old students worldwide. Judging by the headlines it inspired, few nations were satisfied.
“German education minister: Poor PISA school results ‘alarming,’” read one. “Australia’s classroom disruption among worst in world, prompting calls for ‘digital detox,’” said another. The Jerusalem Post lamented, “‘Catastrophic event on historic scale’: Israel plunges in PISA rankings with worst-ever test scores.”
The results, The New York Times’ report said, “show that the challenges facing the United States — including the allure of smartphones, social media and A.I., and the continued fallout from the pandemic — are not just American problems.”
Dire consequences
But, to be sure, they are American problems, too. These problems, if not addressed, could have dire consequences for the future of a variety of cherished institutions and disciplines, from medicine and trade to democracy itself.
The tests measured aptitudes in reading, science and math among students worldwide. Compared with the 37 other mostly free nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, U.S. students were above average in science and reading, but middling in math. But the average is sinking.
Students in Singapore, Japan and South Korea were among the top scorers. China also did well, but critics noted the Chinese allowed the tests to be administered only in the wealthiest, and therefore most advantaged, provinces.
The comparisons can be misleading. U.S. reading scores were near their lowest point in 25 years. The Hill quoted U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon saying the results “confirm a decade of stagnation and a devastating gap: we successfully propel our highest achievers, but the lowest-performing students are falling further behind — and have suffered a loss of learning in reading equivalent to nearly a year and a half of instruction compared to 2015.”
Lowest levels ever
The Hill noted the scores represented “the lowest average levels of performance observed in all three subject areas across all OECD countries, not just the U.S., since the test started in 2000.”
The results bring to mind a recent report in The Atlantic titled “The End of Reading Is Here.” In it, staff writer Rose Horowitch noted a 2022 survey by the National Endowment for the Arts, which found that only half of American adults said they had read an entire book of any kind that year.
The American Time Use Survey, meanwhile, found that only 16% of Americans read for pleasure in 2023, down from 28% in 2004.
By contrast, 57% said they had placed a wager with a gambling company that year.
The worldwide declines seem to be widening the gaps between privileged high achievers and the poor. But the declines in reading were the most pronounced among the three disciplines, and they could have the biggest consequences.
The Atlantic quoted Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA, who said the loss of literary skills means people “are losing the higher-order abilities of comprehension and synthesis. America, in other words, isn’t illiterate. It’s postliterate.”
The Atlantic put it this way: “The advent of reading and writing transformed society. It altered people’s consciousness and politics, along with the intellectual feats they were capable of. The decline of reading will bring about changes of the same magnitude. It will affect our innermost thoughts, our society’s politics and culture, and how we tell the history of our civilization.”
Decline isn’t inevitable
Utah is taking on the problem head-on: “Fully half of our third graders are not reading on grade level — and that’s a community issue,” Utah first lady Abby Cox said as students headed back to school in August. She then added, “Our teachers are working tirelessly, but it’s going to take all of us to turn this around.”
Gov. Spencer Cox and Abby Cox are leading a reading effort, supported by educators and philanthropists, to try to get people reading. Can a child opening a book actually make a difference?
If every child opens a book, and every parent or grandparent or significant person in one’s life opens a book, it will establish new habits and new results.
Despite the gloomy PISA results, we don’t believe any of the trends are inevitable. The attention-sapping effects of smartphones can be counterbalanced. Many states, including Utah, are enacting bans on phones in any classrooms during the day. Concentration is a learned discipline. Its decline does not have to be permanent.
But clearly, 43 years after “A Nation at Risk,” the risks are bigger than ever. It’s time to focus politicians, administrators, teachers, students and parents once more on overcoming the barriers of the day and learning the skills necessary to succeed.
This will require a broad and public effort, but the stakes are too big for failure.