Reading scores have been falling across the U.S. since 2013, and most states are
still struggling to recover. Only five states plus Washington D.C. saw real improvement in
reading between 2022 and 2025, and California is not among them. The states that did improve
share one thing in common: they switched to phonics-based reading instruction, an approach
backed by decades of research on how kids actually learn to read. Southern states like
Louisiana and Alabama were among the earliest to make that shift, and their results stand out
nationally. Louisiana is the only state where both reading and math scores are higher now than
before the pandemic. Detroit also shows what’s possible when schools combine better reading
instruction with a serious focus on getting kids to show up consistently. Researchers say this
progress can happen everywhere, because we’ve done it before.
