by Evelyn San Miguel ‘26

Reading scores are the lowest they’ve been in three decades, according to a test conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for the 2024-2025 school year; demonstrating similar lows in math scores as students continue to struggle post-pandemic. Marginal gains for non-English speaking students in science are among one of the study’s few silver linings, illustrating a devastating trend reflected across the country in nearly every school district—students aren’t reading anymore, and it’s not only hurting their grades, but their ability to succeed in college and in the workforce. As a part of an in-depth investigation, The Warrior sat down for extensive one-on-one interviews with four Sherwood English teachers who have decades of cultivated experience across their careers.

They provided thorough accounts based on their experiences in the classroom of how the literacy skills of high school students have declined over the years, impacted by the pandemic, technology use, and now AI, among many other factors. Additionally, The Warrior conducted its own survey, polling students from the teachers interviewed from a variety of course levels. These students were asked a number of questions regarding their perception of their English education, illuminating concerns highlighted by other sources nationwide.

The Warrior’s study confirmed the data presented by the national surveys, with about 65 percent of students—among most of which were AP students who would be expected to read more on average—saying they read for pleasure an hour a week or less on average. Most students couldn’t recall how many books they’d read outside of class readings, and if they did give a number, it was around zero.
NAEP’s study highlighted a number of concerns, including that a third of seniors tested nationally could be classified as functionally illiterate, meaning they have minimal capacity to comprehend basic texts and their overall messages, as well as a difficult time reading aloud, or writing with proper grammar. The New York Times reported on the study’s results, determining that “only about a third of twelfth graders are leaving high school with the reading and math skills necessary for college work.”

In an editorial piece for The Atlantic, college professors at elite universities noticed the trend as well, with many of their students—even those concentrated in English-based majors—struggling to uphold the rigorous reading curriculums that have been the standard for decades. In an interview with Literature Humanities professor at Columbia University Nicholas Dames, he recalled one of his students coming to his office hours and telling him something incredibly disturbing: she never had to read a full book, cover-to-cover, in high school. “It’s not that they didn’t want to do the reading, they didn’t know how,” said The Atlantic.

In several interviews with Sherwood English teachers, teaching across all levels, their observations were similar. And the data, along with their personal testimonies, indicate that the problem isn’t just at universities far, far away, but right on our doorstep.

Honors English 10 and AP Lit teacher Patty Jasnow recalled a time when she could assign novels to her AP students that contained complex language as well as challenging literary elements. As a part of a curriculum change, many of those novels have been phased out for more contemporary ones that contain simpler prose and less challenging diction. Like she and many of her colleagues corroborated, this shift is a part of a larger trend of a decline in student literary skills.

“The tendency [for many students] is to just look up and get a quick fix rather than trying to muscle through, or work the brain a little bit and sit and try to dissect something for a couple seconds,” said Jasnow. While she believed some of the changes made to the book choices for English courses were in part due to a shift to more modern prose to adapt to the trend among students to not read the texts given as a result of their less approachable vocabulary and structure, Jasnow defended many of the newer titles for their virtues.

The new titles were far more diverse and inclusive, as well as containing more approachable language to appeal better to students. “I stand by a lot of [the texts] because they offer a variety of experiences, a variety of social, racial, and political backgrounds,” Jasnow told The Warrior. “We have a better cross section of different writers from different time periods and different continents and different styles … it was in service of getting less represented choices a chance to be heard,” she added.

AP Lang and English 10 teacher Lynnette Evans-Williams agreed. Contemporary novelists bring new ideas and life experiences to the stories that they are delivering to their audiences. And for teachers, that’s their greatest goal. With hundreds of students in their classes every day no one student is the same and the books they are reading can not assume that of them. “If the goal is to analyze language, does it have to be this text where there are voices that are absent … Just because you think [students] should get the classics, you’re isolating your students who can’t relate to those books,” said Evans-Williams, who also heads the English Department.

Still, she noted her own conclusions about the state of her students, and how many of them are missing foundational skills they would have been expected of them a decade ago. The simple things, like italicizing the title of a book in an essay, had her students looking up at her and asking what the word ‘italicized’ even meant. Some students, Evans-Williams says, are missing those basic skills that would have been the norm prior to the pandemic. “I have students who come in and ask, ‘Wait a minute, what’s a claim?’ In terms of just creativity and style in recent years, it’s lacking. Knowledge of current events, what’s going on in the world around you, not many students seem to have that. It’s concerning.”

Alexandra Green, who teaches Honors English 9 and AP Lang, has similar concerns about her students’ reading comprehension skills. “[Teachers] ask a question that has critical thinking embedded in it, and [students] stop at that surface level. They don’t dive deeper into what they think it means. I’m not saying everyone is in that category, but it’s more than it used to be,” Green observed. Post-pandemic she noticed a lack in intellectual curiosity and the passion it takes for students to really explore deeper in their classes, damaging her students’ abilities to understand the texts they analyze or perform as well as she knows they could be on assignments.

“When I consider the lexile levels and the complexity of the texts we’re reading now, there is a noticeable lexile decline,” Brianna Palomo, who teaches On-Level and Honors English 9, said. She believed it was a result of a broader shift to contemporary young adult fiction, that — though they peak student interest—lack the complexity and rigor of the so-called ‘classic’ fiction novels more commonly taught in previous years. “On one hand, I see it’s great that we’re reading books that are contemporary, but on the other hand, I worry that it is sometimes at the expense of rigor,” she said.

Over past years, Palomo noticed an immense shift in student focus and rigor. For many of her classes, she realized she couldn’t trust her students to do reading outside school, which led her to utilize precious class time to read almost all of the book. Over the summer, she knew she needed to make a shift. She opted for—like most of the other teachers interviewed did as well—a new routine, reading about 40 percent of the book in class and the rest assigned as at home reading.

“I just wish students were reading or at least doing audiobooks, even TV,” commented Jasnow. “I keep pressing upon some students that there’s some great shows on streaming and they are complex narratives with juicy, messy characters and you can get good analytical stuff … but I don’t see a lot of that.” The short sound bites found on Tiktok and Instagram, Jasnow said, are more appealing to some students, with technology absorbing attention spans and focus.

These trends are not just concerning to these teachers, but in their view are outright devastating for many students today. For them, AI and technology are some of the biggest culprits for this learning loss on top of other uncontrollable factors, compounding the foundational crack in skills evident after the literal learning loss of the pandemic. “It’s heartbreaking … that people are utilizing AI in … unethical methods. I think it bodes very badly for the state of our culture and our society as a whole, because of course what’s lacking is critical thinking, and what I like to call the productive struggle,” Evans-Williams said mournfully.

Palomo agreed wholeheartedly. Not only were the students choosing to utilize these tools shying away from their own education, but preventing themselves from learning and understanding beautiful stories. Her disappointment lies in the future of her students’ journeys with reading, and how for a significant portion of her students, the texts being given to them in class “are some of the [only] books they’ll ever read. And I want them to be good books, and rich texts,” she noted, tears welling in her eyes.
While there were many outliers to the heartwrenching trends, Jasnow confirmed that she is seeing fewer and fewer students with the full set of advanced skills needed for an English class. She still sees students who are excelling, but the lows are just as low. “The problem is the preponderance of kids are sometimes missing skills, and it’s not even the writing skills. It’s just sitting down and attention span skills,” Jasnow said.

All four teachers concurred that using and abusing AI for schoolwork will only hurt students, and the long-term effects of not fully comprehending the texts they are reading and having poor writing skills will damage their abilities in college in the short term and in their careers in the long run. And yet, real policies on AI have taken a long time to filter down from MCPS’s central office. For the most part it’s a matter of understanding and an ethical question of what students really need to be getting out of their education, which is a confounding issue across the board even at elite universities. With the advent of software tools like Lightspeed, teachers have been provided with a stronger sense of security for in-class assigned writing. English teachers at Sherwood and high schools across the country—as well as professors at universities—are pulling back from assigning essays for students to write outside of the classroom. Despite this, there are students that still slip through the cracks. “It’s like a Band-Aid for [students],” Palomo said.

“I would rather [students] turn in an idea that’s [theirs], that maybe lacks a little bit of complexity, but it’s still [theirs],” said Palomo. “Give me something as your teacher to work with, and then we can work on making it complex and have that practice of becoming a stronger critical thinker.”
For Sherwood teachers, they are not entirely averse to using AI for themselves or their students. Instead of using it to bypass real learning, they argued, AI and technology should instead help supplement students’ education. Rather than attempting to replace teachers’ roles in the classroom, AI tools should take the workload off so they can spend more time developing necessary skills for and upholding relationships with their students. Still, uncertainty remains about implementation of AI into curriculums, and whether teachers should move with the tide, or continue to push against it if they believe it’s harmful for students.

“My philosophy as a teacher since I started is that I want every student who is in my class to walk away becoming a more informed citizen, and more curious, to critically question what’s in front of you,” said Evans-Williams. “To lead with curiosity, to really find out, is this really happening? Or is this AI? That has always been my teaching philosophy is that every child can learn, and that every child should become a critical thinker and a critical citizen.”