How Our Schools’ Foolishness Is Courting ‘Civilizational Failure’

We’ve been having a debate about “book bans” in recent years, but given the steep decline in student literacy, the deeper question is how any child would even notice whether a book is available in a school library. The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford recently published an eye-opening study documenting steep declines in student test scores, especially in reading. Over the past 10 years, reading scores have declined in 83% of America’s school districts. What looked like a COVID-driven catastrophe is instead part of a long-running trend. Reading scores were falling at a similar clip prior to the pandemic, from...