American Kids Are Functionally Illiterate, and Only Their Parents Can Fix It
If you're a parent with children in the government school system, you should be angry
The following guest post is written by
, an award-winning author and former writing coach who has worked with thousands of students across the country. Drawing on years of firsthand experience, he delivers a sobering report on the state of literacy in America—and why parents must take charge if they want their children to truly learn.In 2017, I received an email from a frustrated mother. Her fifteen-year-old son, Jake, was failing English class, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Having tutored thousands of kids before, I happily agreed to help. I met with Jake and looked over the assignment sheet for the book report he was supposed to write. I then asked to see whatever he’d written already, which was nothing.
Changing strategies, I used the assignment sheet to prompt some questions about the book so I could roughly gauge Jake’s understanding of what he’d read. The only question he was able to answer even partially was: “In one sentence, what is the book about?” To this, he replied: “A kid who’s mad at his dad or something… I think.” To every other question, he could only respond: “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure.” I tried a simpler question, and then an even simpler one, until I was asking for basic details such as: “Why is the main character upset with his dad?” Jake had a few half-baked ideas but no clear answers.
I skimmed the book and confirmed that it was well within an appropriate reading level for a fifteen-year-old. It also was clear that Jake was not stupid; he picked up on many things quickly once they were explained clearly and correctly. According to his mother, he was not autistic or developmentally delayed, nor did he have any learning disabilities. He also wasn’t particularly rebellious or obstinate—I could tell that he was making a genuine effort and that he was getting increasingly frustrated with his own inability to do what was being asked of him. He simply didn’t understand the book he’d read, nor did he know how to write about it—not even at a fifth-grade level.
But here’s the really infuriating part: Within five minutes of meeting Jake, I knew with full certainty that none of this was his fault. Remember the assignment sheet I mentioned—the one written by a degreed, certified, and licensed public school teacher? It was far worse than anything Jake said or wrote that day. It was riddled top-to-bottom, front-to-back with severe grammatical errors, typos, incomplete sentences, nonsensical questions, statements that ended in question marks but were not questions, rambling asides, self-contradictory premises, and heated comments about real-world politics that had absolutely nothing to do with the book or the assignment. The fact that the person who had written that assignment sheet was “teaching” children was, to be blunt, morally offensive.
I don’t think I was able to help Jake in any meaningful way, despite my best efforts. I estimated his reading and writing abilities to be at the level of an eight-year-old. When I got home after our first meeting, I did a bit of research on his teacher. She was not a new grad in her early twenties, still struggling to settle into a system she didn’t yet understand—she was nearly fifty, and she’d been teaching for more than twenty years.
The worst thing about Jake’s story is that it is not an edge case or an outlier—it’s the norm, and it has been for much longer than I’ve been teaching and tutoring. I tutored professionally from 2011 to 2019, and in that time, I worked with more than two thousand students both remotely and in person, from fifth graders to doctoral candidates, across at least half the states in America. Well over half of those students—likely close to two-thirds—were functionally illiterate, meaning that they could recognize and copy words and phrases but were not able to understand what they read or wrote if it was above a certain (very low) threshold of complexity. Most of the rest—those who were not functionally illiterate—were at least five years behind in reading and writing.
The vast majority of all the students I wasn’t able to help were enrolled in or had graduated from so-called public (i.e., government-run) schools.
Once the full scope of government schools’ failure started to become clear to me, I started trying to make it clear to parents. (A small minority of students I worked with were simply slackers or delinquents, but in most cases, the schools and the teachers were unequivocally at fault.) Time and again, I found myself editing assignment sheets, example essays, and other documents written by teachers, covering them in red ink and shaking my head in disbelief at the monumental level of incompetence on display. I would show these edited versions to parents and explain (in an objective, non-hysterical fashion) that their child didn’t understand the assignment primarily because the teacher didn’t understand it either. Perhaps naively, I expected most parents to cover their mouths in shock and immediately start firing outraged questions at the teacher. That happened in fewer than 10 percent of cases—probably fewer than 5 percent. Most commonly, parents would shrug and say something along the lines of: “I don’t know anything about any of this. All I know is that my son needs to get a B on this paper to pass the class. Can you help him do that or not?”
Almost invariably, my response was: “I can help your son, but not quickly. No one can get him up to this level in a matter of a few weeks or months. He needs six months of heavy and consistent help—maybe longer—to catch up.”
Very few parents took me up on that offer.
I stopped tutoring in 2019 because I just couldn’t do it anymore. I teach and tutor because I love reading and writing more than almost anything else in life, and I love seeing the flash of understanding in students’ eyes when they finally grasp the difference between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. I love seeing the pride behind their smiles when they sheepishly hand me the final draft of a truly A+ essay or short story. I love it when, at our final meeting, I can tell that they’re intellectually ready for the next few years of their lives. On rare occasions, students hugged me before we parted ways for the last time. I loved those hugs most of all.
But these kinds of happy endings are nearly unachievable today. By and large, students enrolled in government schools are so far behind in reading and writing that I still have trouble believing it. The most shocking part of all (at least to me) is the widespread lack of parental outrage. Where are the parents lined up around the school building and down the block, demanding to know who the hell hired the people teaching (or rather, not teaching) their children? Government school teachers and administrators should be getting publicly blasted and replaced on a scale never seen before—again, not all of them, but certainly a majority. Instead, I look around and, for the most part, I see parents too tired and frustrated to care, or—worst of all—actively denying the existence of the problem.
If you’re a parent with kids enrolled in a government school (or a less-than-satisfactory charter or private school), you’re no more able to solve the societal problem than I am—but you can solve it for your own kids. It’ll take some extra time and effort, and maybe some extra money, but it’s far from impossible. The solution can be broken into three steps; these steps may not be easy, but they are simple.
Spend some time learning the evidence-based principles of teaching—not necessarily so that you can teach your kids yourself but so you can better evaluate your kids’ teachers. Many parents are surprised to hear that learning to teach well is not particularly difficult or time-consuming—not if you’re learning from a teacher who truly understands teaching. It most certainly doesn’t require four to six years. Any reasonably intelligent adult can gain a solid understanding of the core principles of teaching in two or three months of study and practice. I recommend Teacher and Child by Haim Ginott and Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov, as well as a one-hour documentary about a truly wonderful and unique private school (in California, of all places).
Meet with your kids’ teachers—all of them, if necessary—and ask politely but firmly for an explanation of a recent assignment. Ideally, bring one for which your child received a poor grade and ask for a detailed explanation of why the assignment warranted that grade. (It’s equally likely that your child received a high grade that he or she didn’t actually deserve; grade inflation is a huge and still-growing problem.1 This, too, is destructive to your child’s mind.) What, specifically, are the students expected to do? Have they been given examples or templates? If so, you should definitely evaluate those, too. If not, why not? You don’t need to be an expert in the subject to ask these questions or to understand the answers; the teacher should be able to give clear and concise explanations that don’t require any advanced knowledge. That is literally a teacher’s job. If the teacher can’t explain the assignment, demonstrate the standards, and justify the grade in ways that are crystal clear to you, then that teacher’s explanations sure as hell aren’t clear to your child.
If you determine (or even suspect) that your kids’ teachers aren’t up to snuff, you have a difficult choice to make. Not every family can afford a private school (and private schools aren’t automatically better, although they tend to be significantly better in general). Do you supplement or replace the government school with a microschool program, a carefully vetted private tutor, homeschooling, or something similar? Almost any option will be harder on both you and your children, at least in the beginning, but few things are harder—or more painful—than trying to achieve a healthy, happy life having been “educated” by incompetent teachers.
Based on past experience, I expect only a small percentage of readers to take my warning seriously, but a small percentage is not zero, and every family—every child—matters. A detailed, step-by-step guide to reclaiming control of your children’s education is far beyond the scope of an essay like this one, but if even one parent reads this and rescues his or her children from a failed school system as an eventual result, I’ll consider that a monumental win.
I’ve said some things today that may be shocking or hard to believe. I’m not asking you to take my word for any of it, but I am asking you to look—to really look—for yourself. If your kids are enrolled in a government school, there’s a high chance that you won’t like what you see. Get deeply involved in your kids’ education and demand answers that make sense from their teachers. A great education maximizes a child’s chance at a great life—and a bad education almost completely destroys that chance. The best day to closely scrutinize the people teaching your kids was yesterday, but the second-best day is today.
I don’t agree with everything in this article, particularly in cases where the author suggests further government intervention in education, but the author’s identification and description of the problem is broadly correct.
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Related Links on The Reason We learn:
Is Your Child a Victim of Educational Neglect? – How even well-meaning parents and schools may be failing to meet children’s basic intellectual needs
What Are We Doing to Our Smart Kids? – How modern schooling neglects gifted students and pushes them to underachieve, disengage, or disappear
Elite-College Johnny Still Can’t Read – Why even our best schools are failing to teach literacy
I had this realization two years ago. My son was in a public elementary school and the level of supposed teaching was atrocious. He spent more time getting yelled at for snapping a rubber band (he has ADHD and sensory issues) than being taught how to read. We tried a private school which was just as bad or maybe worse. As a second semester 3rd grader, he could barely read the sunday nfl recap (which his teacher was allowing him to read for his free-reading assignments). I pulled him out of school and have been homeschooling him ever since.
We'll never go back to public schools. I pulled my daughter out of school for different reasons, and we'll be homeschooling for the rest of their educational careers.
This piece is heartbreaking, honest, and a serious wake up call— and frankly, in my opinion, shows criminal neglect of duties by government schools and their administrators. I can personally validate what you talk about here insofar as teachers who can’t write or speak with correct grammar, spelling and punctuation. Frightening.
Love your positive attitude and energy Deb, we may not be able to “save the world” but perhaps change the course for one student at a time. Beautiful piece.