Literacy epidemic hits Illinois as fewer than 1 in 3 students read well

Student literacy is in trouble nationally. Illinois is one of 41 states where just 1 in 3 or fewer of its fourth-graders met reading standards in 2024.

Fewer than one-third of Illinois fourth-grade students met or exceeded reading proficiency standards on a recent national assessment, part of a nationwide literacy crisis in which students are already behind in fourth grade.

Students failed to meet or exceed reading standards in most states in 2024.  Illinois joined 40 other states and Washington, D.C., in which 1 in 3, or fewer, fourth-grade students met or exceeded reading standards.

Research has pinpointed third grade as a critical reading milestone because students need to have learned to read by then or they will not be able to absorb curricula during the remainder of their school years. If they cannot read, social studies, math and other subjects become incomprehensible and their futures bleak.

But there’s hope: Many states, including Illinois, have passed laws aimed at aligning reading instruction with evidence-based practices to improve the literacy and academic achievement of students. Still, Illinois could and should do more.

Just 30% of Illinois fourth graders are proficient in reading

Every two years, fourth- and eighth-grade students across the nation take the National Assessment of Educational Progress. According to the Nation’s Report Card, it is “the only assessment that allows comparison of results from one state with another, or with results for the rest of the nation.”

On the most recent national exam in 2024, Illinois ranked 29th in the U.S. for the percentage of fourth graders at or above proficiency in reading – down from 17th in 2022. It went from being in the top half of states to the bottom half in just two years.

The national percentage of students meeting or exceeding reading standards was just 31%, with 26 states seeing proficiency above that level. But Illinois didn’t even meet that low bar, missing the national average by one-tenth of a point. But four other Midwestern states were above that level : Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Leading the nation was Massachusetts, where 40.4% of fourth graders were at or above proficiency in reading. Following were New Jersey with 38.3% and Utah at 36.3%.

At the bottom: New Mexico with 20.3%, followed by Alaska at 21.7% and Oklahoma at 22.7%.

High school graduation, future employment and earning potential are on the line, even by third grade

Third grade marks a critical literacy point for students, meaning the low levels of proficiency as evidenced in the national assessment threaten the wellbeing of students throughout their lives.

“Students who do not ‘learn to read’ during the first three years of school experience enormous difficulty when they are subsequently asked to ‘read to learn,’” according to the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators. If a student struggles to read at grade level by the end of third grade, up to half of the printed fourth-grade curriculum is incomprehensible.

A report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation warns about the harms of a student’s inability to read effectively by the end of third grade. The research shows a student’s likelihood to graduate high school can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by their reading skill at the end of third grade. By the beginning of fourth grade, students transition from learning to read to reading to learn.

The authors warn “if we don’t get dramatically more children on track as proficient readers, the United States will lose a growing and essential proportion of its human capital to poverty, and the price will be paid not only by individual children and families, but by this entire country.”

The price paid by students for poor third-grade literacy: lower future earning potential. The median annual earnings of adults ages 25 through 34 who had not completed high school were $6,000 a year lower than the earnings of those with a diploma, according to data from the Census Bureau’s 2017 Current Population Survey.

The unemployment rate for high school dropouts was 13% compared to the 7% unemployment rate of those whose highest level of educational was a high school credential.

Additionally, the average high school dropout cost the economy about $272,000 compared to individuals who complete high school because of “lower tax contributions, higher reliance on Medicaid and Medicare, higher rates of criminal activity, and higher reliance on welfare,” according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The link between reading level in third grade, future graduation and future earning potential does not bode well for Illinois’ students and families.

States are getting serious about literacy through “science of reading” laws

With the staggering rates of early learners struggling to read across the country, many states have passed legislation to align reading instruction with evidence-based practices to improve the literacy and academic achievement of students. These evidence-based practices are called the “science of reading.”

A federally funded report by the National Reading Panel in 2000 first outlined five essential components of effective reading instruction as the basis for the science of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary development and reading comprehension.

Rather than adopting the panel’s evidence-based instruction methods, many states continued to use a “balanced literacy” approach, which did not incorporate structured phonics instruction. According to Reading Partners, balanced literacy instruction is criticized for “relying too heavily on contextual cues to guess words and their meaning, known as the three cueing system. For example, students are instructed to find a picture of a butterfly on a page and guess the word ‘butterfly’ in the text.”

Many states have initiated a return to the science of reading.

According to Education Week, 40 states and Washington, D.C., have enacted legislation since 2013 concerning evidence-based methods to teach students how to read.

Illinois is among them. Lawmakers amended the school code in July 2023 to include a section on literacy to address the low rates of literacy in Illinois public schools.

But that was just an initial step. It only offered guidelines that are not required in Illinois’ 866 school districts. More explicit action is needed to address the low rates of reading in Illinois public schools, such as more frequent assessments of early grade literacy, notice to parents when their students are identified as falling behind and interventions aligned with evidence-based literacy instruction.

States such as Mississippi, Florida and Colorado have already paved the way in implementing these reforms, and all ranked above the national average in 2024. It’s time for Illinois to join them.