Beyond Excerpts

“The death of the novel arrived in my 9th grade English class some years ago,” a former English teacher who blogs under the name Cafeteria Duty has written.¹ That day, the class was about to discuss the dramatic courtroom scenes in To Kill a Mockingbird, when it is at last revealed what happened between Tom Robinson, a Black man in the South in the 1930s, and the white woman he is accused of raping.

Before launching into that discussion, the teacher decided to first ask students to review the major plot points and characters. This, according to the teacher, is the “astonishing” debate that ensued:

Tom Robinson was the sheriff, one student asserted.

No, that’s Lennie, corrected another.

Lennie’s from a book we read last semester, stupid, someone politely corrected. Tom Robinson is the character who never leaves his house.

The class erupted. That’s Boo! Above the din, someone shouted, Tom is Scout’s classmate, the boy with no lunch!

On it went.²

In shock and “not a little despair,” Cafeteria Duty berated the class for not having kept up with the reading, briskly summarized the plot of the book, and “never taught that novel again.” Realizing that students couldn’t be counted on to do any reading for homework, the teacher turned to increasingly shorter novels before ultimately abandoning teaching whole books altogether.

Cafeteria Duty is not alone. The novels that used to be staples of English classes—The Great Gatsby, 1984, The Scarlet Letter—seem to have faded from the curriculum, often replaced by brief texts and excerpts. Hard data are difficult to come by, but Cafeteria Duty, now an administrator, calls it an “obvious given” that “students are reading fewer books for school, and English teachers are assigning fewer books, most certainly at the high school level.”³

Many other observers concur.⁴ Three former teachers who now write guides and offer professional development on reading instruction say they’ve seen a dearth of whole books during their visits to hundreds of middle and high schools in recent years.⁵ Psychologist and author Jean Twenge has written that at her daughter’s high school, “regular English classes no longer assign books, only short stories and articles.”⁶ I’ve spoken with two brothers—one a recent college graduate and the other a freshman in college—who attended a highly selective public high school in Washington, DC. Aside from a couple of creation myths in ninth grade—and, for one of them, the short novel Things Fall Apart—they hadn’t been required to read an entire book during their high school careers.

The limited data available for earlier grades indicate that many children also aren’t reading whole books before they get to high school. A 2023 survey of English language arts teachers in grades three through eight found that only 17 percent relied primarily on whole texts, defined to include “complete poems, novels, plays, and articles.” Almost half said they use some whole texts combined with shorter pieces. Significantly, about a quarter primarily used basal readers, which generally don’t incorporate whole books, and/or text selections and excerpts.⁷

Brief Passages Are Failing Our Students

Lack of student interest is one of many justifications for the shift away from whole books. Another is lack of time in a world where, as Cafeteria Duty observed, many students simply don’t read outside class.⁸ That’s been especially true since the pandemic, when many schools lowered expectations because students were dealing with difficult or even traumatic situations. Even though the pandemic is long over, those looser standards are often still in place.

Teachers also cite shrinking attention spans. In the 2023 survey, 83 percent of teachers said their students’ reading stamina had decreased since 2019, including 53 percent who said it had decreased “a lot.”⁹ Experts say that screens, phones, and social media have accustomed students to skimming and reading only brief snippets. Students have also gotten used to the constant stimulation provided by digital media, making it harder for them to persevere through lengthier texts.¹⁰

In addition, I’ve heard English teachers say they’re under pressure to cover a range of genres—not just novels but short stories, poetry, plays, and nonfiction—as well as teaching skills like research and writing. The Common Core State Standards have been widely interpreted to require English teachers to include more nonfiction, even though the percentages of nonfiction in the standards were intended to apply across the curriculum.¹¹ In addition, the Common Core’s emphasis on “close reading” may have led to increased reliance on short texts, since it’s hard to conduct a close read of an entire novel.

Even before the Common Core became influential, the federal No Child Left Behind legislation contributed to the trend away from whole books by attaching high stakes to standardized reading tests. Those tests present students with brief passages or excerpts followed by comprehension questions. In an effort to equip students for success on the tests, many schools have adopted that approach for reading instruction as well, despite the lack of evidence that it increases test scores—or comprehension.¹²

Consider a lesson, available online at go.aft.org/mgy,¹³ designed to teach third-graders the skill of identifying literal and nonliteral language in a story.¹⁴ The vehicle for teaching the skill is a story about Amelia Bedelia, the famously literal-minded fictional housekeeper. In the story, Amelia Bedelia’s employer asks her to get the spots out of a dress in the closet. Of course, she finds a polka-dotted dress—and proceeds to get the “spots” out by cutting them out with a pair of scissors.

In the lesson, students get only one paragraph from the book, followed by comprehension questions of the sort they would see on a standardized test—like “What is a different way that Mrs. Rogers could have asked Amelia Bedelia to do what she wanted?” Providing children with the entire book would not only be more engaging, it would also likely make it easier for them to grasp a complex concept like nonliteral language.

While standards and tests have contributed to this approach to reading comprehension, the fundamental impetus is a long-standing but mistaken assumption that pervades the education system. Reading comprehension has been seen as essentially a set of skills and strategies, like “making inferences” and “finding the main idea,” that can be taught and measured in the abstract.¹⁵ As a result of their training and materials,¹⁶ many literacy teachers see their job as teaching these comprehension skills rather than any particular content—or any particular books.

If comprehension skills are in the foreground, teachers who are under pressure to cover a lot of material are likely to opt for shorter texts as a means of teaching the skills. Education journalist Holly Korbey asked her son’s middle school teacher why the class was only reading excerpts or just the first half of a chapter book. His reply was that “it doesn’t matter whether it’s the entire book or an excerpt” because “the skills are the same.”¹⁷

It’s certainly important for students to be able to find the main idea or make inferences, but evidence from cognitive science indicates that these aren’t skills that can be taught in the abstract and applied generally. Unlike riding a bike, reading comprehension skills don’t “transfer.” If you know how to ride a bike, it doesn’t matter which bike you’re riding. But reading doesn’t work that way—which topic you’re reading about matters. It’s easy to make an inference about a text on a topic you know a lot about and difficult or impossible to do so with a text on a topic that’s unfamiliar.¹⁸

Prior knowledge about a topic isn’t the only component in the complex process of comprehension, but it’s a key factor and one that has been largely overlooked. And the more general academic or cultural knowledge and vocabulary people possess, the greater their chances of understanding anything they try to read.¹⁹ The most effective way to build that general knowledge and enable general reading comprehension is through a curriculum that builds knowledge of lots of topics systematically, beginning in the early grades.²⁰

Not only does skills-focused instruction fail to boost reading comprehension, it also turns reading into a joyless chore. When a nationally representative sample of 13-year-olds was asked in 2023 if they read for pleasure every day or almost every day, only 14 percent said yes. That’s a marked decline from 2012, when 27 percent were in that category, and from 1994’s 32 percent. The flip side is that in 2023, 31 percent said they never or hardly ever read for fun—a significant increase from 2012, when the percentage was 22, and 1994, when it was just 12.²¹

Of course, societal factors like social media have contributed to this trend, but it’s a reasonable assumption that the way reading comprehension is taught in schools has led many adolescents to see it as something that has nothing to do with fun. And those societal factors only make it more urgent than ever for schools to show kids that reading books can be both a way of learning about the world and a source of pleasure. One way to do that is to introduce students, in school, to whole novels.

Whole Books Boost Comprehension

Reading whole novels can boost both students’ interest in reading and their reading comprehension scores. One study,²² which took place in England, had students read two challenging novels, one classic and one contemporary, over the course of 12 weeks, with most of the reading done aloud by teachers (though students also read aloud, usually in small groups to make them more comfortable). The students, who were in the equivalent of seventh grade, attended 10 urban and rural schools and ranged from being 50 or more months behind in reading to performing above average.

According to the authors of the study, in England (as in the United States) struggling readers “are often regarded by teachers as unable to read whole narratives and given short, simplified texts, yet are expected to analyze every part in a slow laborious read-through.” The 20 teachers participating in the study were, in contrast, advised to move through the novels at a fairly brisk pace, pausing only when needed (e.g., when students looked confused or at the end of a section) to make sure everyone was following the story.

At the beginning and end of the 12-week period, students were given standardized reading comprehension tests. On average, students made almost nine months of progress; weak readers made 16 months of progress. And even though the researchers weren’t trying to spark a love of reading, the experiment appeared to have that effect. Students who had previously been reluctant readers couldn’t wait for the next chapter, frequently coming to class excited to read. This study has given rise to a project based at the University of Sussex in England, called the Faster Read, that offers free guidance for teachers (see go.aft.org/so3 for details).

Why would novels boost reading comprehension so dramatically? The researchers weren’t sure, but I have a theory. We’re more likely to remember things when we’re affected emotionally, and novels can engage us emotionally far more than brief texts or excerpts can. In addition, as cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham noted, the human mind “seems exquisitely tuned to understand and remember stories” as opposed to expository texts.²³ Those factors may have helped students absorb and retain the language structures and vocabulary they heard in the novels, equipping them to better understand the unrelated passages on the standardized tests.

Still, it can be difficult to teach using novels and whole books in the current environment. Is it really worth the effort? For a number of reasons, the answer is “yes.”

Students’ Abilities Are Suffering

The trend toward brief passages and skills-focused instruction in the K–12 curriculum has consequences for what students are able to do once they graduate from high school. Anecdotal and some experimental evidence indicates that many college students, including some at highly selective institutions, struggle to make sense of 19th-century novels.²⁴ Some professors say that even contemporary works of literature are incomprehensible to their students.²⁵

I’ve spoken to a number of professors in various disciplines who say they’ve had to significantly lower their expectations, reducing the length of reading assignments and still devoting class time to summarizing them. There have always been students who don’t do the reading, but they say this is a sea change.

Stuart Carroll, an experienced professor of elementary education at the College of New Jersey, told me his department used to have all students read the same book over spring and winter breaks, with positive results. But it became harder to get students to do the reading, and the program was discontinued in 2017. Carroll has seen a similar phenomenon in the freshman seminar he teaches. It covers five “interesting and readable books,” and he says in the past, students “came out of the class with a more positive attitude toward reading.” Now, he says, only a few students bother to read the books.

“I was kind of shocked this year at what my students thought was an onerous amount of reading,” said an assistant professor of European history at a flagship state university who requested anonymity. He eventually realized he couldn’t assign more than 20 pages per class, “which extremely curtailed what I could do.” Even then, he could tell that many students still weren’t reading what he’d assigned.

Even when students do the reading, professors say, many are unable to understand or analyze it. “We are in new territory when even highly motivated honors students struggle to grasp the basic argument of a 20-page article,” Adam Kotsko, who teaches at North Central College in Illinois, wrote recently.²⁶

These anecdotal observations are backed up by data: ACT scores have been declining over the past decade or so, including in the area of reading comprehension. In 2024, 57 percent of students scored “Below Proficient in Understanding Complex Texts,” a marked increase from 2016, when only 23 percent fell into that category.²⁷ Likewise, scores on the most recent national test of 12th-graders’ reading comprehension ability dipped to a historic low, with the average score in 2024 ten points lower than when the test was first given in 1992.²⁸

The combination of brief passages and skills-focused comprehension instruction in K–12 may also lead to a “check the box” approach to reading. Many students no longer see the value of diving into a complex text and extracting whatever meaning and nuance might be there. They often want professors to tell them what to look for—or just provide the key points. “Gone are the days when you could expect students to do the prep work,” said Jackie Witkowski, an assistant professor of art history at Western Washington University.

If a professor doesn’t provide a summary, students are increasingly likely to turn to generative AI (artificial intelligence) tools like ChatGPT to provide one. Various surveys have found that anywhere from a third to almost all undergraduates use AI, with more recent studies showing higher proportions.²⁹

But reading a summary of a novel is a far different experience from reading the novel itself. I ran the opening paragraphs of Bleak House by Charles Dickens through ChatGPT. Although the summary I got back was accurate, it lacked the charm and humor that made Dickens so popular in his own time and makes his prose worth reading today. Of course, the summary was easier to understand. But, crucially, that very lack of effort deprives the reader of important benefits.

As literacy researcher Maryanne Wolf has suggested, learning to parse denser prose may develop both cognitive abilities and the “cognitive patience” that enable deep reading.³⁰ In addition, evidence shows that in middle and high school, having students summarize a text can provide a powerful boost to their understanding.³¹

Recent studies suggest that when students subcontract that task (or others that require cognitive effort) to a bot, their ability to think critically and analytically decreases.³² Similarly, if teachers in middle and high school provide summaries of novels rather than requiring students to read whole books, as some are apparently doing,³³ students may be ill-equipped to engage in summarizing themselves and unaware that they’re missing out on its potential cognitive benefits.

Reliance on summaries and shortcuts, whether provided by humans or AI tools, can lead to what some researchers have called “metacognitive laziness.”³⁴ Rather than using the shortcut as a way to supplement learning, students begin to depend on it as a crutch. That kind of dependence can make it difficult for students not only to read but to absorb and retain information.

Even at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, a “great books” school that draws a self-selected group of students who want to immerse themselves in challenging texts, there’s been a change. Brendan Boyle, the associate dean for graduate programs, says that the “bookish” students the school draws aren’t arriving with the same ability to sit with a text and mine it for meaning. “Our graduates are no worse” than they used to be, he told me. “It’s just that the amount of labor involved in getting them to that point is greater.”

To be sure, K–12 schooling isn’t solely responsible for the changes that college instructors are seeing. But the K–12 system is likely to be our best hope for addressing them. By immersing students in whole books and treating reading as an end in itself, rather than a means of developing discrete skills, teachers at all grade levels can foster the kind of reading stamina, sustained focus, and intellectual curiosity that all students deserve to enjoy.

Whole Books Are Rewarding

It’s important to show students that reading can be fun, and reading novels—especially contemporary novels that are relatively easy to access—is a great way to do that. Reading for pleasure is associated with a host of positive outcomes, including cognitive development, academic achievement, and social and emotional well-being.³⁵

One study found that children and adolescents who read frequently for fun, especially those who read whole books, tend to experience more of a boost to reading comprehension than those who read less or engage in other kinds of reading.³⁶ Another found benefits even from “light” books like science fiction or thrillers.³⁷ Yet another found that, in adults, reading whole books is associated with greater longevity—greater even than reading newspapers and magazines.³⁸ So it’s worth doing whatever we can to ensure that more students read for their own enjoyment.

It’s also important that all students in a classroom have the opportunity to read and discuss the same book, as educator and instructional coach Doug Lemov and his coauthors explain in The Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading.³⁹ Choice in reading material has its place, but making it the center of a literacy curriculum leads to a fragmented class experience. And, left to their own devices, students are likely to choose books that relate to topics that already interest them rather than having their horizons expanded by a teacher or curriculum designer who is aware of more options. Providing children with the experience of reading a book together, especially a novel, can transport the entire class into another world.

At an elementary school in Amarillo, Texas, where 39 languages are spoken and almost all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, the practice of reading whole novels aloud together has had enormous benefits, according to faculty members. Describing teacher Lori Hughes’s experience, Lemov said, “Each class feels like a community, and her students look forward to what book is coming next.”⁴⁰ The school’s principal, Genie Baca, notes that fluency scores for the classes that read whole novels together have improved dramatically, as have behavioral issues. I’ve heard similar observations when visiting elementary schools using curricula that center on shared novel reading.

Another argument for having students read novels—especially literary ones—is that it helps develop empathy. That certainly resonates with the experience of many readers, and studies suggest that reading fiction can enable readers to understand what others are feeling and can reduce prejudice against stigmatized groups, especially when readers are “emotionally transported” into the story.⁴¹ Some studies have found that when people read fiction, regions of their brains become activated in ways that reflect the characters’ feelings and actions.⁴² It’s not yet clear, though, if those effects carry over to actual behavior.

Still, as Maryanne Wolf has written, the act of reading can change our consciousness, so that “we learn to feel what it means to be despairing and hopeless or ecstatic and consumed with unspoken feelings.”⁴³ And it’s likely that the longer and deeper the story, the greater the benefits. Following a set of characters over a period of time can emotionally transport readers in a way that short fiction and excerpts can’t.

Kyair Butts, a middle school English teacher, saw that happen when he taught sixth-graders the novel Out of the Dust. Butts was dubious that his students—Black kids in inner-city Baltimore—would be interested in a story about “a 13-year-old white girl from Depression-era Oklahoma.” But, he told me when I interviewed him for a podcast, “when students care about a character, and when they realize that Billie Jo lost her mom and her baby brother, they are hooked. They want to keep reading.”⁴⁴

For all these reasons, it’s important to introduce students to, and regularly immerse them in, the enjoyable, emotionally transporting experience of reading a novel. But to fully equip students to be proficient readers, whether they go to college or not, teachers also need to guide them in making sense of challenging text, including nonfiction. Given the rampant distractions and unreliable information we all confront these days, students need to develop the capacity for sustained attention and complex thinking that immersion in complex, lengthier text can foster. That isn’t always fun. Like all learning, it requires effort. At the same time, it can be immensely rewarding.

Overcoming Barriers to Whole Book Instruction

But what about the obstacles that Cafeteria Duty and other teachers say are standing in the way of teaching whole books? Those barriers can be overcome—but probably not by individual teachers alone. Schools and districts need to provide support, ideally beginning in the early elementary grades.

While the dominant elementary literacy curricula rely almost entirely on short texts and excerpts,⁴⁵ more recently developed knowledge-building curricula that incorporate whole books seem to be gaining traction across the country. One such curriculum, Bookworms K–5 Reading and Writing, has students read a total of 265 books across the elementary grades.⁴⁶ Although not as well-known as some other knowledge-building curricula, the evidence for its ability to increase general reading comprehension, especially for lower-performing students, is compelling.⁴⁷ And judging from my own observations of the curriculum in action and conversations with educators who have used it, it also boosts students’ interest in reading.

Given the importance of exposing children to whole books, that should be one of the criteria states and districts use when approving or selecting curriculum. Shorter texts can of course have value as well, but a steady diet of them fails to supply children with the literacy nutrition they need. Some short texts, including nonfiction, can be taught in connection with a book, especially one set in a different time or place. If students are reading a novel that takes place during World War II, for example, a nonfiction article on rationing can enhance their understanding of the text while also exposing them to a different genre. Writing instruction can also be embedded in the content of a novel.

It may be more difficult to include whole books in the curriculum at higher grade levels, but it’s not impossible—and it’s crucial that students continue to read books at increasing levels of complexity. Doug Lemov and his colleagues have created an ELA curriculum for grades 5–8, Reading Reconsidered, that is built around novels, along with shorter texts that enhance students’ understanding of them.⁴⁸ It includes routines designed to help students retain vocabulary and information, develop fluency, and build writing skills. Lemov and his team are also piloting a high school curriculum built around novels.

The middle grades curriculum is now used in about 500 schools, and “teachers are surprised by how much they enjoy teaching and the kids enjoy reading,” Lemov told me. “You have to develop the habit of attentional skills. You have to cause reading to happen and create the conditions for stamina.”

Reading Reconsidered combines teacher read-alouds, communal reading, and individual silent reading. The teacher can “read kids into” a chapter, Lemov says, modeling fluent reading and piquing their interest. “The idea is that in class, teachers will empower students to read outside class.”

Realistically, students do need to read outside class for the curriculum to include whole books at higher grade levels. Teachers can hold students accountable for assigned reading through mandatory note-taking and quizzes. In addition to ensuring that students are doing the reading, such activities help students understand and remember key points in the story, avoiding the kind of class dialogue that led Cafeteria Duty to abandon whole books. But if students are in the habit of not doing homework, it may require a shift in culture engineered by a whole school, or even a whole district, to reverse that.

Especially in schools where many older students face reading challenges, however, it may still be necessary to devote a good deal of class time to reading whole books. Former English teacher Meredith Coffey has suggested that high school administrators protect or even add time for in-class reading, perhaps through double periods for ELA.⁴⁹ They can also set expectations that, for example, students will read a complete novel or play during every unit.

One significant barrier to such a change in culture is the widespread assumption that brief texts are necessary to teach comprehension skills. Lemov says that teachers who use Reading Reconsidered often worry it won’t prepare their students for state tests. To allay their concerns, the curriculum includes guides showing that a lesson relating to a novel is teaching students how to, for example, make an inference about a character even if that’s not the lesson’s main objective. As Coffey points out, not only can students practice comprehension skills using whole novels, understanding a literary device or gleaning the author’s message may be easier with a longer text.

To enable all students to read at length and understand texts at a deep level, we need to change widely held assumptions about what reading comprehension is and how it can be fostered.⁵⁰ We have to recognize that limiting students to brief texts seen as vehicles for teaching comprehension skills is an illusory and self-defeating approach. Technology and other societal pressures present new and daunting challenges to students’ abilities and attention spans, but our best chance of addressing those challenges is to center whole books in the K–12 curriculum.

Schools still have the potential to turn the United States into a “nation of readers,” to borrow the title of a landmark 1985 report.⁵¹ In the face of the temptations of screens, social media, and generative AI, that goal has only become more urgent than ever.  

Natalie Wexler is an education writer and the author of Beyond the Science of Reading: Connecting Literacy Instruction to the Science of Learning and The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—and How to Fix It. She is also the coauthor, with Judith C. Hochman, of the first and second editions of The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades.

Endnotes

1. H. Korbey, “A Novel Burden,” The Bell Ringer (blog), November 15, 2024, hollykorbey.substack.com/p/a-novel-burden.

2. Korbey, “A Novel Burden.”

3. Korbey, “A Novel Burden.”

4. S. Lurye, “Not-So-Great Expectations: Students Are Reading Fewer Books in English Class,” Associated Press, September 17, 2024, ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2024/not-so-great-expectations-students-are-reading-fewer-books-in-english-class.

5. D. Lemov, C. Driggs, and E. Woolway, The Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading: Translating Research to Reignite Joy and Meaning in the Classroom (Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass, 2025), teachlikeachampion.org/books/teach-like-a-champion-guide-to-the-science-of-reading.

6. J. Twenge, “Are Books Dead? Why Gen Z Doesn’t Read,” Generation Tech (blog), March 5, 2024, www.generationtechblog.com/p/are-books-dead-why-gen-z-doesnt-read.

7. S. Sawchuk, “How to Build Students’ Reading Stamina,” Education Week, January 15, 2024, edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-to-build-students-reading-stamina/2024/01; and E. Heubeck, “How This Teacher Sparks a Love of Reading for Pleasure,” Education Week, January 15, 2024, edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-this-teacher-sparks-a-love-of-reading-for-pleasure/2024/01.

8. Korbey, “A Novel Burden.”

9. Sawchuk, “How to Build.”

10. A. Masood, “The Screen Time Paradox: How Social Media Is Both Eroding and Revitalizing Reading,” Medium (blog), May 27, 2025, medium.com/@adnanmasood/the-screen-time-paradox-how-social-media-is-both-eroding-and-revitalizing-reading-79b2d04a5a32.

11. E. Felton, “Lead Writer Responds to Common Common Core English Gripes,” The Hechinger Report, February 13, 2015, hechingerreport.org/lead-writer-responds-to-common-common-core-english-gripes.

12. H. Catts, “Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension,” American Educator 45, no. 4 (Winter 2021–2022): 26–33, 40.

13. Education World, “Lesson Plan: Literal and Nonliteral Language - Amelia Bedelia,” educationworld.com/a_lesson/literal-and-nonliteral-language-amelia-bedelia.

14. K. Marsh, “Why Kids Aren’t Falling in Love with Reading,” The Atlantic, March 22, 2023, theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/03/children-reading-books-english-middle-grade/673457.

15. D. Willingham, “How We Learn: Ask the Cognitive Scientist: The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies,” American Educator 30, no. 4 (Winter 2006–2007): 39–45, 50.

16. D. Buck, “Teacher Voice: Everything I Learned About How to Teach Reading Turned Out to Be Wrong,” The Hechinger Report, July 8, 2024, hechingerreport.org/opinion-everything-i-learned-about-how-to-teach-reading-turned-out-to-be-wrong; E. Ross, “How Far Have We Come in Supporting Children’s Reading Comprehension?,” Usable Knowledge, Harvard Graduate School of Education, March 7, 2025, gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/25/03/how-far-have-we-come-supporting-childrens-reading-comprehension; and R. Pondiscio, “Reading Comprehension Is Not a ‘Skill,’” Thomas B. Fordham Institute, December 10, 2020, fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/reading-comprehension-not-skill.

17. H. Korbey, Curriculum Insight Project, and K. Vaites, “Students Read Few—or No—Books in Top ELA Programs, Survey Finds,” The Bell Ringer (blog), May 23, 2025, hollykorbey.substack.com/p/students-read-fewor-nobooks-in-top.

18. D. Willingham, “How Knowledge Helps: It Speeds and Strengthens Reading Comprehension, Learning—and Thinking,” American Educator 30, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 30–37.

19. D. Willingham, “School Time, Knowledge, and Reading Comprehension,” Daniel Willingham--Science & Education (blog), March 7, 2012, danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/school-time-knowledge-and-reading-comprehension.

20. H. Catts and A. Kamhi, “Rethinking Reading: Differentiating Comprehension from the Components of Reading,” American Educator 48, no. 4 (Winter 2024–25): 38–41.

21. Nation’s Report Card, “NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment Results: Reading and Mathematics: Reading: Student Experiences,” National Assessment of Educational Progress, nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/reading/student-experiences/?age=13.

22. J. Westbrook et al., “‘Just Reading’: The Impact of a Faster Pace of Reading Narratives on the Comprehension of Poorer Adolescent Readers in English Classrooms,” Literacy 53, no. 2 (May 2019): 60–68. For a freely available version of this article, see go.aft.org/lso.

23. D. Willingham, “Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Why Do Students Remember Everything That’s on Television and Forget Everything I Say?,” American Educator 45, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 34–38.

24. S. Carlson, A. Jayawardhana, and D. Miniel, “They Don’t Read Very Well: A Study of the Reading Comprehension Skills of English Majors at Two Midwestern Universities,” CEA Critic 86, no. 1 (March 2024): 1–17.

25. H. Bookbinder, “The Average College Student Is Illiterate,” Persuasion (blog), March 31, 2025, persuasion.community/p/the-average-college-student-is-illiterate; and N. Heller, “The End of the English Major,” The New Yorker, February 27, 2023, newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/the-end-of-the-english-major.

26. A. Kotsko, “The Loss of Things I Took for Granted,” Slate, February 11, 2024, slate.com/human-interest/2024/02/literacy-crisis-reading-comprehension-college.html.

27. F. Prete, “The 2022 ACT: It’s Not All Bad News,” Minding the Campus: Reforming Our Universities, December 1, 2022, mindingthecampus.org/2022/12/01/the-2022-act-its-not-all-bad-news; ACT Inc., Profile Report – National: Graduating Class 2020 (Iowa City, IA: 2020), act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/2020/2020-National-ACT-Profile-Report.pdf; and ACT, Inc., Profile Report - National: Graduating Class 2024 (Iowa City, IA: 2024), act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/2024-act-national-graduating-class-profile-report.pdf.

28. Nation’s Report Card, “NAEP Report Card: Grade 12 Reading: Explore Results for the 2024 NAEP Reading Assessment at Grade 12,” National Assessment of Educational Progress, nationsreportcard.gov/reports/reading/2024/g12.

29. D. O’Connell, “How Are Students Really Using AI? Here’s What the Data Tells Us,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2025, chronicle.com/article/how-are-students-really-using-ai.

30. M. Wolf, Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (New York: Harper, 2018), 91–92.

31. E. Stevens, S. Park, and S. Vaughn, “A Review of Summarizing and Main Idea Interventions for Struggling Readers in Grades 3 Through 12: 1978–2016,” Remedial and Special Education 40, no. 3 (2019): 131–49.

32. C. Zhai, S. Wibowo, and L. Li, “The Effects of Over-Reliance on AI Dialogue Systems on Students’ Cognitive Abilities: A Systematic Review,” Smart Learning Environments 11 (2024): 28.

33. Lurye, “Not-So-Great Expectations.”

34. Y. Fan et al., “Beware of Metacognitive Laziness: Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Learning Motivation, Processes, and Performance,” British Journal of Educational Technology 56, no. 2 (March 2025): 489–530.

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36. M. Torppa et al., “Leisure Reading (but Not Any Kind) and Reading Comprehension Support Each Other—a Longitudinal Study Across Grades 1 and 9,” Child Development 91, no. 3 (May 2020): 876–900.

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38. A. Bavishi, M. Slade, and B. Levy, “A Chapter a Day: Association of Book Reading with Longevity,” Social Science & Medicine 164 (September 2016): 44–48.

39. Lemov, Driggs, and Woolway, The Teach Like a Champion Guide.

40. D. Lemov, “Ep. 4, Literacy and the Science of Learning: Doug Lemov on the Power of Whole Books,” Knowledge Matters (podcast), July 15, 2025, knowledgematterscampaign.org/post/ep-4-literacy-and-the-science-of-learning-doug-lemov-on-the-power-of-whole-books.

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43. Wolf, Reader, 45.

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50. Wolf, Reader, 168–87.

51. Korbey, “How to Teach Kids.”

[Illustrations by Islenia Mil]