Kids can’t read anymore. Does it matter? (with author Jason Reynolds)

Summary

NO SUCH THING – “Kids Can’t Read Anymore. Does It Matter?”
Original air date: April 15, 2026
Hosts: Manny Fadal, Noah Friedman, Devin Joseph
Guests: Kelsey Clodfelter (High School English Teacher), Jason Reynolds (Author), Dr. Paul Thomas (Education Scholar)

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Episode Overview

This episode confronts the alarming headlines about America’s “reading crisis,” with hosts Manny, Noah, and Devin fact-checking claims that today's kids no longer read — asking why that might be, if it matters, and what should be done about it. The hosts combine personal experiences, interviews with a teacher, a bestselling children’s author, and an education scholar, ultimately challenging the narrative of literacy decline while unpacking deep questions about culture, education, technology, and societal expectations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Stage: Is There a Literacy Crisis?

• Discussing headlines about declining reading scores from sources like The Atlantic and the “Nation’s Report Card.”
• Noting that 40% of 4th graders and a third of 8th graders are now below “basic” reading levels—numbers not seen in decades.
• Hosts debate whether test scores capture a true crisis, or if changing behaviors and expectations around reading are to blame.
  • “If you don't expect them to do the things, then they're not gonna do it.” — Devin (24:31)
• Personal anecdotes reveal a generational shift: today’s teens assigned fewer (or zero) whole books in school; no more mandatory summer reading.

The Role of Phones & Media

• Extensive reflection on how smartphone usage and social media have changed attention spans and information consumption for both kids and adults.
• The group discusses the rise of learning through short videos and bullet points, instead of deep reading.
  • “There are great TikTok creators out there...but you’re not gonna get a full story in...even the best version of that.” — Noah (10:48)
  • “It's like people want other people to think for them.” — Devin (11:53)
• Acknowledgement: sometimes short-form media is the right tool; often it isn’t.

Interview 1: Kelsey Clodfelter (“Ms. C”), High School English Teacher

[17:39–27:05]

• Confirms literacy declines from her 11 years of teaching, especially the move away from assigning and teaching whole novels in favor of short excerpts and test prep.
  • “We were told...we do not teach novels, we teach excerpts...It’s a waste of time. Seeing that is very frustrating.” — Kelsey (18:48)
• Links this to drops in student engagement and reading comprehension.
• Blames overemphasis on standardized testing and a fear that kids “won’t read anyway.”
• Sees a big factor in tech: students and staff alike struggle to avoid distractions and engage with longform texts.
  • “It’s not actually a comprehension issue. It’s like a distraction issue.” — Kelsey (22:12)
• Suggests “tension” is needed: teachers must actively insist on focused reading time, even if it’s uncomfortable or “dull.”
  • “To help students read better, they have to do the very unpleasant work of sitting there and actually forcing themselves to read.” — Kelsey (24:50)
• Calls for a curriculum valuing both deep, longform texts and classroom structure, over test drills.
  • “I feel like the test prep model is what we really need to move away from. And that is definitely something that can be influenced, like, at the state and policy level.” — Kelsey (26:07)

Interview 2: Jason Reynolds, #1 NYT Bestselling Children’s Author

[28:16–37:41]

• Shares his experience publishing the audio-first novel Soundtrack, arguing that the format of stories must serve the audience, and literary gatekeeping is counterproductive.
  • “If you give a baby a bottle of milk, does it count as eating?...Either we want the world to have stories or we don’t.” — Jason (30:15)
• Opposes elitism around audiobooks: listening requires focus and is as nourishing as print reading.
• Believes there is a reading crisis, globally and in the U.S., largely due to technology and a culture of constant distraction.
  • “A kaleidoscope of distraction...The only one thing you could entertain yourself on the go with [in the past] was the book. Now, the phone is [that]. And in that phone is the world.” — Jason (33:26)
• Stresses that adults don’t model reading for kids anymore, and expectations for reading are both too low and ill-suited for today’s culture.
  • “Maybe we don’t start with Melville or Hemingway...Maybe we start with something that feels a little more contemporary and fresh.” — Jason (33:54)
• Warns against using test data to narrow the types of books published and read, describing the danger in focusing on numbers over engagement and representation.
  • “If you look at the numbers, the numbers will tell you...kids in black communities aren’t reading...then we need not publish books about black boys...Or, you could see those numbers and say we should probably publish books about black boys so that they could read...” — Jason (35:23)

Interview 3: Dr. Paul Thomas, Professor & Education Scholar

[40:46–61:28]

• Directly challenges the “crisis” narrative: argues that almost every generation laments kids’ reading and that most data are misused by policy-makers and media.
  • “Either we have always been in a reading crisis or we've never been in a reading crisis...I just don't like the word crisis.” — Dr. Thomas (41:53)
• Explains how “proficiency” on national tests is set at an intentionally high statistical threshold, often misrepresented as normal grade-level performance.
  • “Proficient on NAEP is at the 70th percentile...designed for only 30% of children to reach.” — Dr. Thomas (43:39)
• Sees the crisis narrative as driven by nostalgia, political agendas, and commercial interests in new testing and curriculum products.
• Critiques the “science of reading” movement and “structured literacy”—arguing that scripted, phonics-heavy curricula:
  • reduce teacher autonomy
  • whitewash curriculum, undermining engagement and equity
  • lack scientific backing as a “miracle” solution
• Stresses that learning and reading are shaped more by social context (poverty, health, home life) than by schools or teachers alone.
  • “Schools do not change society. Schools reflect society.” — Dr. Thomas (56:45)
  • “Access to text in the home and community and school are strongly correlated with high literacy.” — Dr. Thomas (61:28)
• Proposes that “buying books for every child” would likely be more impactful than expensive new reading programs.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “If you don't expect [kids] to do the things, then they're not gonna do it.” — Devin (24:31)
• “There are great TikTok creators out there talking about politics...but you’re not gonna get a full story...” — Noah (10:48)
• “If you give a baby a bottle of milk, does it count as eating? Yes...The nutrients are the nutrients.” — Jason Reynolds (30:15)
• “Schools do not change society. Schools reflect society.” — Dr. Paul Thomas (56:45)
• “We need to make books sexy again. In any form.” — Devin (62:34)
• “We don’t incentivize people to read.” — Manny (13:52)
• “We have stopped rewarding curiosity in this society.” — Devin (63:18)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:25 — Recap of recent dire headlines about national reading statistics
• 05:58 — Hosts' personal school experiences vs. those of today’s teens
• 08:02 — Technology, attention, and the shift in reading habits
• 17:39 — Interview: Kelsey Clodfelter on changes in classrooms, test prep, and expectations
• 22:12 — Kelsey on tech’s effect on student concentration
• 24:50 — The role of “tension” and discipline in developing reading habits
• 28:16 — Interview: Jason Reynolds on audio storytelling and what counts as reading
• 33:26 — Jason on why reading is declining in a world of infinite media
• 35:23 — Data, representation, and why numbers-driven strategies can backfire
• 40:46 — Interview: Dr. Paul Thomas dismantles the “crisis” narrative
• 43:39 — How standardized testing definitions mislead the public
• 49:48 — “Science of Reading” movement and its commercial/ideological drivers
• 56:45 — The overwhelming power of “social context” over educational results
• 61:28 — Policy recommendations: more books, smaller classes for struggling students
• 62:34 — Closing reflections: reviving the culture of curiosity and reading

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Reflections & Closing Thoughts

• The episode does not produce easy answers but thoughtfully blends skepticism, research, and personal experience to reframe the reading “crisis.”
• The hosts and guests agree: literacy matters deeply, but the crisis may be more cultural and systemic than a sudden educational emergency.
• Solutions suggested: value and model reading at home and in society; assign challenging texts but meet kids where they are; provide access to diverse books; resist overreliance on testing and top-down curriculum fads; and reignite curiosity as a social value.
• “We need free thinkers...We need people who just are asking questions.” — Manny (63:27)

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Further Information

• Links to readings and research referenced by Paul Thomas are available in the episode show notes and newsletter.
• Contact the show at [e-mail] with topic suggestions or feedback.

Transcript

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

Kaleidoscope.

[Manny Fadal]

I'm Manny.

[Noah Friedman]

I'm Noah.

[Devin Joseph]

This is Devin.

[Noah Friedman]

And this is no Such Thing. The show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by actually doing the research in this episode. Kids aren't reading anymore. Who cares? There's no such thing.

[Paul Thomas]

No such thing.

[Noah Friedman]

No such thing.

[Manny Fadal]

No such.

[Paul Thomas]

Touch. Thank you. Touch. Thanks.

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[Noah Friedman]

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[Kelsey Clodfelter]

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[Paul Thomas]

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[Noah Friedman]

so as we know, there have been many stories Reports about the death of Reading the latest version of the nation's report card shows America's high school seniors have the worst math and reading scores in more than two decades. Just 40% of fourth graders are working below what's considered a basic reading level for their age.

[Paul Thomas]

Nearly a third of seniors did not have the basic reading skills needed to

[Jason Reynolds]

find the details in a given text to understand its meaning.

[Paul Thomas]

Our nation's report card is abysmal right now.

[Noah Friedman]

So one that I'll highlight for now is from the Atlantic magazine titled America is Sliding toward Illiteracy. So this is a quote from the article. By some measures, American students have regressed to a level not seen in 25 years or more. Test scores from NAEP, short for the National Assessment of Educational progress, show that 33% of 8th graders are reading at a level that is below basic, meaning that they struggle to follow the order of events in a passage, or to even summarize its main idea, that is the highest share of students unable to meaningfully read since 1992. Among fourth graders, 40% are below basic in reading, the highest share since 2000. The bottom tenth of 13 year olds, according to NAEP's Long Term Trend data, are hitting lows in reading and math scores not seen since those tests began in 1971 and 1978, respectively. They go through a bunch of different theories of why is it school spending is lower? No, school spending has increased from 2012 to 2022 from 14,000 per student to 16,000, adjusted for inflation. Okay, so that's not the culprit. People look at Covid, there was a dip, but not as pronounced as you would think. And it's kind of numbers have basically leveled out. So it's not like you could totally blame that and Then people talk about smartphones and attention and there's different things. Then there's also stuff about schools teaching kids excerpts instead of full books because no one's going to pay attention to doing that.

[Manny Fadal]

Oh, my God.

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

A disturbing new report on what kids are reading, or rather not reading in school. The New York Times with this headline. Kids rarely read whole books anymore, even in English class.

[Noah Friedman]

If four books was a typical number of books to be experiencing in high school. English Language arts. Now we're seeing many schools reporting that kids are experiencing only one, even two

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books in high school.

[Noah Friedman]

Ela. So something's going amiss. Have you guys seen this? People not reading as far as among peers and also any younger people you might be around.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, I really noticed this with my brother. He's in high school now. He's in senior year of high school. We were talking. This is a year or two ago, it was summer. And I was saying, what books do you have to read this summer?

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

He said, what do you mean, what books do I have to read this summer? I was like, don't you get books assigned from school?

[Manny Fadal]

Summer reading?

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, everybody gets your summer reading for assignment.

[Paul Thomas]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

We would get like two. I think it was like, two books. You know, everybody would wait till the last minute to do it.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

And you may have to spark note half the book, whatever, but.

[Noah Friedman]

Oh, yeah, you had a book you were supposed to read.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah. You had a book that was assigned to you that you were supposed to read. And you said, we don't get summer reading. I was like, okay, is that a new thing? Have you ever gotten summer reading? He's like, no, we've never gotten summer reading.

[Manny Fadal]

Wow.

[Devin Joseph]

So I was like, okay, do you read books during school? He's like, yeah, sometimes we read in class. I was like, do they give you books to read on your own? He said, no. And I was like, okay, this is a high schooler who is not being assigned a single book to read in its entirety. That's crazy.

[Manny Fadal]

And you know.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah.

[Manny Fadal]

Such a stark difference from when we were in high school.

[Devin Joseph]

We were reading multiple books a year. And look, a lot of kids didn't read the books, but the expectation was that you were to read the book.

[Jason Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

And you were talking about the book in full. Not like, here's this one chapter.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

My feeling on it is that there's a bit of a reaction to kids don't have attention spans. They aren't reading anyway. Why would I waste time assigning them something they aren't going to read? So it's just sort of a waste of time. So now we're at the point where the bar has been lowered to the point where it's not even an expectation for them to read. So then it's like, yeah, why would he read? Like, my brother does not like read books for fun, you know, and like at his age, I wasn't really either. I was reading what I had to read for school. Every once in a while would pick up a book. But like, I didn't really start reading for fun until like after college. Most of my reading during high school was because I had to read for school.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah. Do you think it's mainly like the attention span thing? And why do you think that has changed so much?

[Manny Fadal]

The obvious thing that sticks out to me is in, in terms of what's changed since we were in high school is like phone usage. Just the amount of time you spend on your phone, the kind of things you see on your phone. Like when I was in high school, you could basically text someone on your phone and that was it. Like there wasn't. You couldn't like watch videos or anything like that.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah. You weren't on social media on your phone.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah.

[Manny Fadal]

You had to, you did have to go home and get on your dial up Internet to get on Facebook to send a Facebook status.

[Noah Friedman]

And you did.

[Manny Fadal]

And I did. Trust me, I was on there. My cursory guess here is that it's got to be the attention span thing.

[Devin Joseph]

And it's not just kids, right. I think adults are. Nobody reads.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah, that's my thing. I think you can find surveys of how many books adults read too, obviously. But yeah, it's easier, especially when trying to get comprehensive data. My guess is to research obviously for schools and students.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

And like it seems more important than like telling a 40 year old.

[Devin Joseph]

Well is the thing. It's like, yeah, you learn the skill of doing it and it's like, yeah, even if you haven't read a book in, you know, 10 years, like, well, you could read a book. I think it's different. It's the same thing with me of like AI of younger people. It's like, yeah, okay, we know how to write a 15 page, you know, essay ourselves. So if I were using AI to do it now, not great, but like I've done the thing, so I know kind of what goes into it. If you've never read a single book in your entire life, how does that impact how you interpret? Like they're saying people can't read passages and interpret simple information Right. I think a lot of times it gets spun into like an attention span thing, which is obviously. Yeah, that's part of it. But I think a bigger issue is like, people can't comprehend very basic things a little bit like, you know, Facebook, TikTok brain of just sort of like people can basically read headlines and that's it.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah. So that kind of leads to another question is basically, does this actually matter? Like, what are the impacts of this sort of thing if people just largely don't read? Like, what if tech and communication and the way we share information is moving into different mediums and formats? So whether that's, you know, short form video, like TikTok, or longer form media, but audio only, like a podcast, or just like shorter texts, like, what if we just learn through tweets? What do you think are the pitfalls of that?

[Devin Joseph]

I just don't think we're a society right now that values reading in it in a real way.

[Noah Friedman]

That's it to me. I think it's like there's no emphasis from anyone.

[Devin Joseph]

No.

[Noah Friedman]

To actually spend time. I mean, it's not even just about, okay, focusing to read a novel or something. It's like everyone just used to these really short. Whether it's bullet points or tick tocks or something. And it's like, I'm sorry, There are great TikTok creators out there talking about politics or whatever, but like, you're not gonna get a full story in.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

Even the best version of that, it's

[Devin Joseph]

an introduction, it's a different thing.

[Noah Friedman]

And I think people just take that as like, oh, I learned this from this. Tick tock.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

And then. Yeah, they'll flash up the headlines and the bullet points with the statistics of whatever issue.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

But you're not getting any full story from that. And I think that's like slowly then just degrading how we process and like comprehend not only information, but it kind of flattens out any nuance. You could have anything. And even a podcast, I think.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

Same thing where it's like you can listen to a three hour long podcast about health or fitness or whatever. Or whatever. Some. Any of the dumb things we do. Yeah, I think this all the time. Like, whatever. We're doing a 45 minute episode on this. You would be better served if you read 5 articles on this in that time and actually read them.

[Devin Joseph]

The amount of information that we learned for the thing that we're like, this is too much information to put in the episode. Right. Like when we're doing our own research, it's like, we know a lot more information, obviously, than we're saying in the episodes themselves. So, like you're saying. Yeah, it is only scratching the surface. I think people now want. It's like people just want other people to think for them.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

That's why people like, oh, I'm watching a TikTok. This guy's done all the research already. This is what he found to be the most important things. And, like, that's why people love AI. Right. It's like, it just summarizes things for you. You don't have to go through, read the articles, pull out the information, go through the studies, you know, actually read the conclusions, look at the data. Someone has done all that work for you, and you can learn it in 90 seconds.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or faster if you hit that 3s.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, you could. Yeah, you can speed it up. So it's like I get. And look, I think in some ways it's great, right. Like, I think we are at a time where if you want to learn stuff, you know, there's more information than ever. And, like, for a lot of things. No, I don't want to read an article about, you know, some of these topics that I'm watching TikToks about. Sometimes the TikTok is enough information. Yeah. And it's not something I care that deeply about. And it's something like, oh, I'm a little bit informed about this thing and I would be not informed at all about it if there were not a TikTok about it. Because I wouldn't read an article.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah, they're not totally useless, but it's just a different thing.

[Devin Joseph]

But it can't be everything.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah. I mean, I think it's just a big cultural thing. Like.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

It just not pushed whether we can talk about school curriculum. But I just think, like, we don't really value people actually having real deep knowledge about things at all. Because even just think about something silly where it's like, like the performative male meme really annoyed me because it's like, it implies that, like, of course, like, yeah, of course there's going to be some guy in college who, like, gets into some, like, Joan Didion.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

So he can talk to the cute girl at the coffee shop, but like, to act like any guy sitting at a park reading is doing that not because he wants to read, but because he's trying to get laid. It's just like, that could be part of it, but, like, it just like,

[Devin Joseph]

shows how low the bar.

[Noah Friedman]

Well, it just show. Yeah, it Just shows, like, I think, to me, it more says, like, anyone saying that can't ever comprehend wanting to spend their free time spending 15 minutes reading a book. So instead they're like, oh, it'd be a lot cooler if he was staring at his phone watching a dumbass talk about nothing. It's like, yeah, like, that's cool.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah. There's certain ways we don't incentivize people to read.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah.

[Manny Fadal]

Like some. I have run into this and I, you know, I should be paying some more money, but, like, I'll be like, yeah, I want to read more about this thing, and it's paywalled. And I'm like, all right, well, never mind.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Manny Fadal]

And I just. The search for information stops there.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah, that's. That's a good point, too. Right. It's getting harder to access high quality good.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah, the good stuff.

[Devin Joseph]

Information.

[Noah Friedman]

So what I want to do is, I want to find out, is this literacy decline real? What does it mean, and what can we do to combat it? If it actually is a real problem, I'm going to talk to a teacher first, then an author, and then a scholar who's looked into this data to find out what's actually going on.

[Manny Fadal]

Well done.

[Devin Joseph]

That's after the break.

[Noah Friedman]

After the break. That's right.

[Devin Joseph]

All right, fellas, I need you to help me with a problem that I got. You know, usually we're the ones helping other people with their problems, but I'm about to go abroad and I want to watch Met games, Noah. How can I watch them?

[Noah Friedman]

That's a tough one. Maybe get a really large telescope.

[Devin Joseph]

I don't think that's the best way to do it, Manny. Do you have any solutions on how I could watch Mets games abroad?

[Manny Fadal]

I think I've got a slightly more practical solution for you, Devin. If you use NordVPN, you'll be able to change the location of your laptop's IP address and watch the content with no problem.

[Noah Friedman]

What about my privacy online? I'm worried someone's watching me.

[Manny Fadal]

First of all, no one is watching you, Noah. But in case someone was watching you, NordVPN provides you with privacy online, leaving no digital footprint by hiding your IP address. It's like wearing an invisibility cloak while you're surfing the web.

[Noah Friedman]

Sounds comfy.

[Devin Joseph]

So, Manny, I've heard about these VPNs and how they're super slow. How do I make sure my Internet is not throttling?

[Manny Fadal]

If you want to use a VPN without slowing down your Internet, Devin, you're going to want to use NordVPN because whenever I use it I don't see any buffering or lagging while I'm streaming my favorite content.

[Devin Joseph]

How do I get NordVPN?

[Manny Fadal]

Devin if you or our listeners want to get the best discount off of your NORDVPN plan, go to nordvpn.comnst Our link will also give you four extra months on the two year plan and there's no risk because Nord has a 30 day money back guarantee. The link is in the show notes. That's nordvpn.com NST

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[Noah Friedman]

All right, we're back. We're talking about the alleged decline of reading. So the first couple interviews that I want to share are with people who are active in the children's literacy space.

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

I'm Kelsey Clodfelter. I've been teaching English for this is my 11th year now and I have taught in both Chicago and Minnesota. I teach freshmen and juniors right now.

[Noah Friedman]

Kelsey, aka Ms. C, has a big following on TikTok where she shares what it's like to teach kids today.

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

I have an idea that has been Germinating for a while. And it has taken hold of my brain and it's called 90s Classroom. The idea is simple. What if next year, year I do everything within my power to revive the spirit of the 90s in my classroom to bring back the best parts of being a student and a teacher in that era, mind you, this was pre phones, pre Chromebooks, pre AI, pre state testing. I think here's my vision. Extremely limited technology, books everywhere, overstuffed couch in the corner, the rooms bustling with human interaction. I feel like this is doable. I do have the affliction of believing everything's doable for me, but. But this one especially 90s classroom. Let's do it.

[Noah Friedman]

So according to measures like the Nation's report card, reading and math levels have declined to their lowest level like over 20 years. Have you seen this in your experience teaching over the past few years?

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

Definitely. I mean, I think just in, like I said, My 11 year career, I've even noticed a decline. But I think the comparison most millennial teachers draw is just comparing our own educational experience, where many of us were like very avid readers. And also there was a pretty high expectation for how much and how well we should be reading to what we're seeing now with high school age students. I've been at a couple schools where we were told, like, we do not teach novels, we teach excerpts, we teach short texts. Students can read full length novels if they choose to, but we don't teach novels. It's a waste of time. Seeing that is very frustrating because you can see how districts are directly contributing to the decline in students being able to engage with longer form texts.

[Noah Friedman]

Is it a shift because they want to just focus on maybe getting better test scores and they think that's an easier way to do it? Or do they think it's more like the kids won't read longer books, so let's just not even try?

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

I think it's both. I think it's both for sure. I think there's definitely the element of students will do better on standardized tests if we drill them with these short form passages and the questions they'll see on those tests. I think the instinct is understandable, but the consequences of years and years of a curriculum like this is really, really negative.

[Noah Friedman]

So I mean, the ironic thing too is the scores aren't even going up.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

You spend more time. Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

You're like you're doing all this to get what the kids will do for the test scores and then those are going down. So then I kind of asked about that kind of question about like, well, it's the modern world. Maybe we're just evolving in a different way and we don't need this scale as much.

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

Yeah, I think I've had. I've been in a lot of arguments with people about this. I'm just recalling a conversation I had a few years ago at another school where I taught. And I was arguing with a math teacher who basically said, anything students need to learn, they can learn from YouTube videos. Like, anything you need to know how to do, you don't need to read a book, you can watch a YouTube video. And my argument to that was just this idea of learning as a technical how to is really, really different from how I conceive of learning. Right. I think like the beauty of a long form text and being able to immerse yourself in a completely different perspective, it builds empathy, it broadens your worldview. It just does so many things that I think a YouTube video on how to fix a faucet is like, not even in the same category of what we're talking about here. I guess the idea. There is an idea that you should gain something tangible from reading. Right. That you should leave with a piece of knowledge that you can then implement in the world and it will help you in some way. And I think the goal and purpose of reading is so much more aesthetic and kind of amorphous and ill defined. So I get why schools may be resistant to teach something that it's really hard to explain, like how this actually helps students, but the people who believe that it does are really passionate about saying, yes, it does.

[Noah Friedman]

Let's talk a little bit more about generally, like the phones. Do you think that's a big piece of why maybe they're not able to pay attention to long form books anymore?

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

For sure. I mean, I have really, really great students. So, like, right now we're reading a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book in my advanced literature class, and students will read parts of the book and then they'll just tell me I didn't understand any of that. And we'll try to kind of go through and break down why. And it's not actually a comprehension issue. It's like a distraction issue. So I'm like, okay, this sentence, I'll read it aloud. And they'll be like, oh, I didn't see that when I was reading it. I'm like, okay, but when I read it to you, you didn't understand it, right? And they're like, yeah, totally. So it's like they are even Self aware that as they're reading they're kind of zoning out. Their brains are going a million different places. It's something I experience as well as like a very online person. When I am sitting down at night and trying to read, the first 10 minutes are just like my brain's everywhere. And then I can finally kind of get into a flow state. So I can't even imagine what they're dealing with as growing up. You know, many of them are self proclaimed iPad kids. Right. Like raised on iPads. Trying to sit down and like immerse yourself in a book. Book is really challenging.

[Manny Fadal]

It's so fascinating. I mean, even in our conversation about the importance of reading, like, I definitely do find it a little bit harder to read than I did when I was. Yeah, like earlier for sure. I'll have to like, re, like go back and read a page again or like. And I think probably it does have a lot to do with how we consume information and other aspects of our lives, like in social media. So, you know, on one hand it's like, damn, I wish these kids were reading more. On the other hand, you kind of can't blame them. It's like the world they grew up in.

[Noah Friedman]

Oh yeah, yeah. Like you were saying, it's like so hard for us to pay attention. Like even if I'm reading a book, a printed book.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

Every couple pages I'll stop and look at my phone. Nothing going on. It's like, you know, and that's like, I feel like I'm actually pretty good at reading every day. Something.

[Devin Joseph]

I agree.

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

Thanks.

[Devin Joseph]

No, it is. Yeah, I hear her. I think that there is a lot of finger pointing. That's why I'm like, for me it's like not about the kids not reading. It's about changing the expectations to not have them read. Because it's like, yeah, it's tough to read, period. It's gonna be even tougher to read if there's no expectation of you to read.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah, yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

If I was not assigned books in high school to read, I don't know how much reading I would be doing in high school. So it's not like to say these kids are so much dumber and they don't have what I had. It's just sort of like, whoa. If you don't expect them to do the things, then they're not gonna do it.

[Noah Friedman]

Lastly, I asked Kelsey what does she think would help fix this?

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

I think it comes down to tension. Like I think a lot of teachers myself for a long time in My career, too, avoid any kind of tension. And unfortunately, like, to help students read better, they have to do the very unpleasant work of sitting there and actually forcing themselves to read. And you, as the teacher, have to do the very unpleasant work of like, calling out when they're not or being, all right, y', all, we are reading this book right now. We are five minutes in, and I see no one is looking at the page, like, what is going on? A lot of us, too, in our teaching have really been fed this idea that everything has to be, like, super glitzy and engaging all the time, and that students should be, like, on the edge of their seat, like, doing fun, collaborative activities. And I just think, like, I know kids aren't gonna read at home, so we're gonna read and discuss in class. And I think that can make things feel a little bit dull and even tense sometimes, but I think it's worth it.

[Noah Friedman]

As far as maybe bigger picture, like, whether it's from a. I don't know if it's a government policy standpoint. Do you think there's things that could be coming from a higher level that could help get these literacy rates up? Do you think it would be a change in the testing or what sort of programs might work?

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

Curriculum that emphasizes the importance of long form text is necessary. I'm actually really lucky to teach at an IB school. And the IB curriculum is designed around a variety of long form and short form texts, but you really deep dive into certain authors. So, like, for example, when students study poetry, they study a set of poems by one author, and that's like a really cool opportunity to go deep into their style. You also have to read, like, a certain number of novels, a certain number of dramas, and I think that is really, really beneficial for students. Other schools that have not had that type of curriculum that have more pushed, like, the test prep thing. I feel like the test prep model is what we really need to move away from. And that is definitely something that can be influenced, like, at the state and policy level.

[Devin Joseph]

I like this, what she said. I think, you know, I read for fun. I don't think it's boring to read for fun, but I do think there is that tension that, like, sometimes you don't want to read. Sometimes I force myself to read when I'm not in the mood to read, because I'm just like, yeah, I could scroll on my phone for TikTok for 30 minutes, or I can read this chapter of this book, and I'll feel better after reading the chapter of the book. Than I will after scrolling TikTok.

[Manny Fadal]

Oh, definitely.

[Devin Joseph]

But it takes like she's saying sometimes it takes a little bit to get into it. You kind of have to force yourself like, okay, I gotta focus. I gotta put my head down and do this. No one is. We've never been on TikTok or, you know, Instagram or whatever and been like, I really gotta get my mind in the right space.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah, true.

[Devin Joseph]

You know, it's just sort of like, yeah, instant, like instant gratification. Yeah, we're doing it.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

So I think there is that discipline and it like you will get to a place that is rewarding and will feel like, you know, like we're talking about. You get engrossed in these worlds, but it takes more time to get truly get into it. And I think I'm glad that she's like, you know, forcing those kids to have discipline and just like shut up and read in class. And it's like, yeah, we can do all that collaborative fun stuff once you read the book. And if you read at home, we wouldn't have to do this.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah, right. So next up, I spoke to, number one New York Times bestselling children's book author, Jason Reynolds. He's written books such as Long Way Down, Ghost and many, many more. Jason has also received the Newbery Honor and NAACP Image.

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[Noah Friedman]

Just to name a few bullet points on his resume. I wanted to speak to Jason in particular because of his book Soundtrack, which was Originally released in 2025 as an audiobook only. I wondered, in a time of a so called literacy crisis, why would you publish something only as audio? It turns out it started off as a traditional print novel, unpublished.

[Jason Reynolds]

I'd written a novel a decade ago that sat in the drawer. Right. I wrote this thing. And for whatever reason, my publishers at the time, I don't know if they didn't see it right, they didn't see the vision of the story or if other stories that I had written sort of, you know, took precedence. Right. And so after a while the book kept getting bumped and eventually it just kind of sat in, you know, purgatorial drawer.

[Noah Friedman]

Years later, a contact of his at Penguin Random House Audio was looking for original audio projects and Soundtrack, which is a book about music, was released into the world anyway. Now Soundtrack is also available in print, but very much reads like an audio first project. And Jason's focus was on the format serving the story. He used this example of an older fellow you might be familiar with.

[Jason Reynolds]

I love Shakespeare and sometimes I wonder just how much of A disservice we have done by reading it so often it. And not seeing it ever. Right. When it was meant to be seen, you know, it's easier to understand if you could just see it. Yeah, totally, but. But instead we're like, studying it line for line, you know?

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah. Which is helpful, but maybe helpful after we. We already kind of know.

[Jason Reynolds]

After we see. Exactly, exactly.

[Noah Friedman]

I asked what he thought about, you know, audiobooks, people who look down on them.

[Jason Reynolds]

People are just so weird about. About that. Right. It's like, if you give a baby a bottle of milk, does it count as eating? Yes. You know what I mean? Like, and the nourishment that that milk is having is still valuable, whether it's being liquefied or whether it's something that has to be chewed. The nutrients are the nutrients.

[Devin Joseph]

Right.

[Jason Reynolds]

And so I don't like it. And I think it's just weird elitism around, like, what the book is supposed to be. And by the way, the reason why I feel that this sort of there's this weird elitism is because I actually don't think that people look at literature or at books, quote, unquote, books as art. I think they look at them as sort of intellectual touchstones. And it's the only. Of all the art mediums, by the way, I would argue that it might be the only one that is this way people put boundaries on even the container that a story can be in, let alone boundaries on the stories themselves. And so I think all of it is foolish. Either we want the world to have stories or we don't. Either we want to make them super accessible or we want to create gates around them so that only a few of us have an opportunity to access them. Either we're going to complain about how we want them to be at the forefront of culture. Right. And if we complain about it, then we fight to make it so that they are at the forefront of culture by making them accessible and changing and by creating multiple formats in which they can live. Or. Or we sort of throw stones from the other side of the road with our, you know, our arms full of, you know, paper tomes, you know, and pat ourselves on the back in that wig for having done the hard work, quote unquote, let alone people don't realize how much concentration it requires to also listen to a book.

[Noah Friedman]

Oh, right, yeah, yeah. That's the big thing.

[Jason Reynolds]

All of it is just nonsense and, like, silly ways for people to sort of figure out ways to separate themselves intellectually. And so I'd rather not Even partake.

[Devin Joseph]

I think it would be beautiful if we were saying we can't get kids to read. They're just listening to audiobooks.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

I think, you know, I think that'd be a pretty good place for us to be.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah, of course. Next I ask the big question. Do you believe we're in a reading crisis? Here's what Jason Reynolds had to say.

[Jason Reynolds]

Do I believe we're in a reading crisis? I think globally, we're in a reading crisis, and I think there are lots of things that we could maybe point to to figure out what is causing the crisis. Right. It's impossible for us to deny the impacts of technology simply because of the injection of hyperstimulation. Yeah. And, you know, it's like, yo, I have so many other things to do. There was a point in the world where there was theater, cinema, radio, eventually television, and then there was the book. And the only one of those things that you could. That you could entertain yourself on the go with would have been the book. The book as an object to have on the body, on the person, in a way that now the phone is. And in that laptop and on that phone is the world.

[Kelsey Clodfelter]

World.

[Jason Reynolds]

Right. A kaleidoscope of. Of distraction. And by the way, we talk about this in this way because I write for kids. We always talk about young people because we see. And I get why. Right. The stakes are high. We want to make sure that they are literate. Right. So, like, it makes sense. But the majority of adults don't read. It could even be argued that they read less because they don't have to. So then there are other questions that one must ask. Right. Number one, is reading being modeled in the home? We be blaming kids. It's always like, man, those kids, they're not. They just don't read anymore, man. And it's like, well, yes, and we should sort of sort this out. But I think there are other questions that we have to ask ourselves. Like, I've heard, I've had arguments around, like, expectations that we should keep expectations high for young people so that they can meet set expectations. I don't disagree with that. I just think we need to also recalibrate what the baseline is to meet them where they are for this moment in this culture, at this particular era of society. Right. That's all I'm saying. Right. So. So, like. So like, if. If we're. If we're recalibrating the baseline, then maybe we. Maybe we don't start with Melville or Hemingway or Steinbeck. Right. Maybe Maybe we start with something that feels a little more contemporary and something that feels a little more fresh. Yeah, maybe we start with me or we start with some of my contemporaries and partners, right? They love Catherine Underpants. And I know everyone's like, but that's not literature. And it's like, like, is it not if Pilky got millions of kids to read? You don't think. Because no one had a problem with Cat in the Hat. No one had a problem with the silliness and the goofiness of Dr. Seuss back then, especially, like, we didn't have any issues with that. Why not lean into Dogman and, like, why not?

[Devin Joseph]

That's how I got my brother to read. Like, when he was younger, he didn't want to read anything else. We got him into the diarrhea with Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah, yeah. You gotta level up.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

Lastly, Jason told me an anecdote about how such an intense focus on data and numbers can result in negative outcomes.

[Jason Reynolds]

I'd done an event at Forbes years ago. They were talking about spreadsheets. It's all very cut and dry. Bottom line mathematics, right? This is what. This is what the chart shows. We're doing projections. We're doing this. There was a mantra they kept saying where they said, the numbers are all that counts, right? The numbers. And then it was my turn to speak, and I said, you know, that's something that, in the literary world, that scares me. If anyone. If I ever heard anyone say, the numbers are the only thing that counts, I say, because if you look at the numbers, the numbers will tell you something. Like kids in, you know, especially, let's say, 2012, right? They'll say, kids in black communities aren't reading, Right? Black boys especially aren't reading. Publishers say, based on the numbers, right? If black boys aren't reading, then we need not publish books about black boys because they don't read. So it'll be a waste of our time to publish books about black boys because that's what the numbers say until you get somebody with a different interpretation of the numbers. And if I walk in that room and I see those same numbers, I say, black boys aren't reading. So we should probably publish books about black boys so that they could read, so we can bring them in. Maybe they're not reading because there is a deficit when it comes to them reading things they feel directly connected to. And then people will say, well, they, you know, kids shouldn't have to feel directly connected to this. That. And not every Kid does. But if we're paying attention to what's going on, maybe these are at least some things we should consider. Why don't we do tests and study the samples of the books that are working and say, well, if long laid down works in a particular way, why does it work? And how do we figure out how to incorporate this more? If Ghost is working in a certain way, why does it work? If the hate you give worked in a particular way, why does this book work? And granted, you can't always get this right, because artists are artists, authors are artists, and they're making the things they're making. You don't want to turn this into some sort of empirical rubric that you repeat over and over and over again because you rob yourself and you rob the young people of understanding the beauty and vastness of what art could actually be. Right? So I'm not saying that. I'm just saying. I'm just saying we do have ways to study what is happening, to figure out how we shift curriculum in general that might be a little more engaging. I'm not saying that this is the only answer. I'm saying that maybe this is the beginning of the bigger answer.

[Noah Friedman]

But I think it's a good point where it's like you can look at the stats and then end up doing the opposite of what you want by making it less appealing.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah, yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

Whether that's like he's saying, holding certain standards for too long or expectations for too long and not adjusting them to actually get people to read, carving out basically certain groups and being like, well, they'll never relate to this or something, so why bother that sort of thing when, like, obviously that's not true.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah, he's got a good idea about, like, packaging reading in certain ways because we're not going to be able to beat technology, so to speak.

[Noah Friedman]

That was Ms. C and Jason Reynolds on Reading. But when we're back after this commercial break, we hear from someone who says there is no crisis in reading. Oh, and we've been looking at this all wrong.

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[Noah Friedman]

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[Manny Fadal]

I'm Manny.

[Devin Joseph]

I'm Noah Devin.

[Noah Friedman]

All right, we're back. So we're talking about the so called reading crisis in America. So lastly I talked to Paul Thomas.

[Paul Thomas]

I am a professor of education at Furman University, which is in Greenville, South Carolina. And probably from my voice you can tell I'm from South Carolina, been here my whole life. I was a high school English teacher for 18 years before I went to higher ed and I've been doing this 42 years now.

[Noah Friedman]

Paul says that all these stories, these pessimistic stories, but the decline of reading and more specifically the decline of reading scores in schools are fundamentally misreading the data and misleading the public.

[Manny Fadal]

He said we can't read.

[Noah Friedman]

That's what he said. He's saying the public is being misled as to the severity of the issue. What if we've been looking at this wrong. Wow. The entire time.

[Manny Fadal]

I love it. I can't wait to hear this. Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

Sit down if you're listening. Sit down.

[Manny Fadal]

Sitting down.

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[Noah Friedman]

Get a stool at least. All right. Here's what Paul had to say. There's been all these articles more recently, but also then it's like when you do a search for it, These kind of come up every. Every few years. I'm sure you're very well familiar. I'll ask you, are we in a reading crisis?

[Paul Thomas]

No. This is sort of paradoxical. Either we have always been in a reading crisis or we've never been in a reading crisis. I just don't like the word crisis because I always use, like, the example of the plane that Sullenberg that, you know, the crash landing in the Hudson. That's a crisis. Everybody's behavior in that was extreme because it was needed. So I worry when we say crisis, we're going to do extreme things. And that's what's happening. And as you mentioned a second ago, almost word for word, almost claim for claim, this happened in the 40s, it happened in the 50s. So I don't think we're in a crisis. I just think the situation we have with reading is essentially the same. It's always been we're underserving certain populations of students. And overall, most people learn to read and function relatively well in the world and probably read more and can read better than we think. Now, those underserved populations like black and brown children, multilingual learners, special needs students, to me, it's a crime that we don't serve those students, but we never have. That is not some new thing that's been caused by a particular reading program.

[Noah Friedman]

So one of these stats that people tend to use in these articles is this national report card. You contend that this is being totally misread or misrepresented as far as what it's actually measuring and then what the numbers are saying. Can you kind of explain what the national report card is and then how it's being misused? When we're talking about this crisis,

[Paul Thomas]

We usually use naep. Naep, that's the letters of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. It comes out of the Department of Education. The dirty little secret about NAEP is it was designed with a little bit of intent, probably a lot of intent, to make schools look bad. The terminology in NAEP is very confusing. The word that everybody focuses on is proficient. So proficient on NAEP is at the 70th percentile that is designed for only 30% of children to reach. That's the way statistics work. That's the way standardized testing works. The misinformation, I think, comes from that states use the word proficient differently. So we give state assessments generally, like third grade and eighth grade, and then sometimes we've fluctuated. But in high school. So when we give a third grade test at the state level and we're looking for proficiency, we tend to think of that as grade level. So the expectation is in South Carolina that ideally all children can be proficient in third grade. Those standards for proficient at the state level match the term basic at the NAEP level. So the crisis, people like journalists and pundits and people trying to sell things generally, they say that, you know, 2/3 of students aren't proficient, well, technically on NAEP. That's true. It doesn't mean they're not at grade level, and it certainly doesn't mean they can't read. Now, historically, about a third of students, sometimes a little more, are below basic on naep, which certainly may be worth being concerned about. Nobody has ever created a standard definition for grade level reading. We don't have that in the United States. Every state has their own. NAEP has their own. And we have never sat down as a country and decided, what's the threshold? Saying that 2/3 of students aren't proficient readers is at best misleading, and I think purposefully so. I think we like for schools to be failing, and I think we like, as a country, we like for teachers to be bad, and we like for students, you know, at any point, we all, older people all say that kids are, you know, can't read, don't read, can't do math. And it's kind of embarrassing, I mean, just to keep saying that over and over.

[Noah Friedman]

What would be the motivation for people making these measures? To make. Want the schools to look bad or what's kind of. Can you kind of tease that out a little more?

[Paul Thomas]

I think it's just human nature to idealize what it was like when we were young. I try to be realistic. I went to junior high and high school in the 70s. Students were smoking pot in the bathroom in my junior high. And you cannot tell me that we were a brighter generation, that we were more dedicated to learning than the students that I taught throughout the 80s and 90s. And the students that I'm teaching now are just. They're brilliant. They're very bright human beings. They've had way better education than I did. And I think it's just this urge to idealize our past and, and I think we get a little depressed about being older and we want something to complain about. Some of it to me too is, I mean, just the nature of a capitalist market society. There is profit, there's political and financial profit. In crisis, there's political and financial profit. Education reform is an industry. Since the early 1980s, people have made a lot of money and politicians careers have been made. George W. Bush became President of the United States almost exclusively on his role as an education governor. Other politicians have figured that out. So there's profit, human nature, idealizing our past, criticizing our current status. I think there's a lot of factors that go into it.

[Devin Joseph]

I hear him on the, the good old days.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

But I would say I don't think my parents would have said they gotten a better education than I did, you know.

[Noah Friedman]

You think they would.

[Devin Joseph]

I don't know. They would not have said that. So I, I do think there is a. People love to glorify, I should say, you know, when they went to school and whatever. But I do think that, that our parents would say we got better educations than they did.

[Noah Friedman]

Right. Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

I don't know if I can say that about my brother.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

And you know, there's a distance, but it's not that much of a difference.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Manny Fadal]

Or like even if reading levels are actually not in a crisis, it does seem to be the case that we don't even assign books well.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah, yeah. And, and to be clear for on Paul's behalf, he's not saying there's nothing to be done and that we're, we're doing better. Yeah, Yeah. I think it's, it's like the way we're then approaching how to fix this issue is, is more the issue he has. As you'll hear, he has lots of problems with kind of the way things are going. We go pretty deep. First off, you're going to hear him talk about what's called the science of reading. So this isn't just like the study of reading. It's, it's kind of a catch all term for a recent wave of new curriculums and teaching styles. Over 40 states have passed legislation incorporating new programs that fall under this category. I'm sure there's tons more we can get into there obviously. But just so you hear him say science of reading, it's, he's talking about like a movement and not like studying reading. So Paul broke down the science of reading into a sort of three pronged multiverse. He's this Comic book guy, as he says, one is the miracle versus crisis framing, two is marketing and three is research.

[Paul Thomas]

One way I talk about this is there's the science of reading. Movement is sort of a multiverse. So you've got journalists who have two stories. They have crisis and miracle. So they are constantly saying education is in crisis. But this school or this state is doing miraculous things. I mentioned George W. Bush, the Texas miracle, and it's a perfect template for what you just asked. It got him huge political capital. While George Bush was governor of Texas, there was some intent standards and high stakes testing, curriculum reform. They raised state testing scores pretty dramatically. And this is something that's kind of dangerous. It's really easy to create standards, teach to the test and raise test scores. So at the same time he was claiming a miracle and the media was kind of eating that up. Researchers in, in Texas scholars education professors looked at the data and noticed at the same time that Texas state scores were going up, their NAEP scores were going down. And it's harder to manipulate those NAEP scores. So it was never a miracle. And I think so you get this. The media likes crisis, miracle, crisis, miracle.

[Noah Friedman]

I think that underscores it a bit where you can, can teach to the test and get those individual scores up, but then the actual like overall reading scores, even these ones from NAEP are going down. So it's like, well, who's better off? It's like, great, you can take one test, but you might not be able to think. I think that's pretty important, the whole thinking thing. So now here's the next multiverse marketing.

[Paul Thomas]

The other multiverse is marketing. Textbook publishers don't really make any money if we keep a book that works or a program that works. So the weird thing that just happened is states have banned all of these reading programs. Units of study by Lucy Calkins, stuff by Fontas and Pinel, which were moderately popular, but the United States has never had one reading program. Units of study at its most was in one out of five schools. There's no way that it was causing a crisis. But the same companies that own those programs, programs on the new programs that states are adopting in a market society churn is really important. The other multiverse is actual research. And that's the one that is really kind of frustrating because a lot of times it's behind a paywall. A lot of times research is incredibly difficult to read and, and scholars have a tendency to be very insular. They don't really take it upon themselves to tell people about their Research. They just do their research. The science of reading movement, really, it kind of started around 2012-2014, but it really took off around 2018, 2019, 2020. But the research is now catching up. There's states where you can actually do the research and see what's happening. And a couple of weird things about this move. One, there's not a single scholarly publication, there's not a single experimental or quasi experimental published study that shows we have a reading crisis caused by balanced literacy or by reading programs. Nobody's done that research. It doesn't exist. And this whole movement which says it's a science of reading is based on the absence of scientific evidence.

[Noah Friedman]

So, for example, Paul said there's been no research that shows that systematic phonics is more effective for all students for learning comprehension. And of course, we want kids to be able to understand what they're reading or. Well, it's kind of not really reading, is it?

[Paul Thomas]

Science of reading has attached itself to a thing called structured literacy. And structured literacy is scripted curriculum. Weirdly, that was a big thing in Texas around the Bush era, and it kind of died out because educators saw that it was a really bad thing. Scripted curriculum takes away teacher autonomy, and it also treats every child exactly the same. To me, those are the two most damning things about the movement. I'm a big advocate for teacher autonomy. Just a little side note, 70 to 80% of teachers of reading are women. And we have, as a nation, decided that they have to be told what to do, and they can't be professionals. And to me, there's a huge amount of misogyny in this whole movement, which is kind of the sign of the times. Also, these scripted curriculum programs have whitewashed the curriculum. We were starting to let students read text that they saw themselves in. You know, girls and children of color, you know, and that was a good thing. We weren't doing a great job, but it was better. There's several studies out showing that the scripted, structured literacy programs are going in the opposite direction. And, you know, texts are being kind of muted, and we're using the text simply to help children pronounce words. We're not worried about the content of it. We're not worried about students being engaged. There's a weird thing going on on social media where the science of people are saying that the kids don't have to like to read. And it's kind of weird. They're arguing that if they learn their phonics, they will start liking to read. And it's like this Weird, I don't know, this weird antagonism toward having any joy in reading.

[Devin Joseph]

And Jason was saying this a bit too, of getting caught, so caught up with the data. Like, the issue is that people can't and are not reading. Like, the issue is not that the test scores aren't what they, you know, like, yeah, yeah, sure. That's a byproduct of it.

[Noah Friedman]

And like, I understand wanting tests obviously to measure. To measure stuff, you know, but we

[Devin Joseph]

shouldn't be okay if the issue is the test scores are bad. Just trying to improve the test scores. Right? Like, the test scores should be reflective of reading comprehension and all these other things, not just how well people can take the test. If people are really good at the test, but they still can't read or comprehend, it doesn't really matter what the scores say.

[Noah Friedman]

I asked what could we do to actually fix this? Whether you want to call it a crisis or just a simple problem. So Jason also mentioned this where it's like we're talking about the schools and kids not wanting to read, but. But there's no model for people at home. And Paul got to this about the impacts of stuff outside of the classroom too.

[Paul Thomas]

Really important research done on what impacts student learning. And it's over 60% outside of the school schools. I'm sorry, I love educ. I'm an educator. I love schools. I love education. Schools do not change society. Schools reflect society. And we've got this kind of idealistic. It was the Arne Duncan nonsense. He was one of the worst secretaries of education ever. But he would constantly talk about game changing. This is a game changer. There's kind of a joke about this. He said it all the time. And I'm sorry. Schools just don't change. They reflect. So a lot of these reading scores and math scores are not a reflection of the quality of learning or the quality of teaching. They're a reflection of the negligence of our society. I mean, we talked about the NAEP data. One fun fact about naep, that people ignore the highest scoring schools in the country. Department of Defense. Why? Those kids have meals. Those kids have health care. Those kids have stable home. Way above. Massachusetts is the highest scoring State Department of Defense is way above them. I mean, significantly above them. I've seen one article on that. Like, we don't, you know, we want to talk about Mississippi as, you know, defying the odds. We don't want to talk about, well, why don't we just change the odds? I'm for universal health care, but why don't we just have it for children at least, or families like, you know, we can start there.

[Noah Friedman]

We need to put everyone in the military now.

[Devin Joseph]

I'm drafting all you want to win.

[Noah Friedman]

Everyone's a soldier now. So here's my king of the world question. So he gets to write the new rules for education and to get these scores back up. What would he suggest inside and outside the classroom?

[Paul Thomas]

It always strikes me as odd that we want children, when they magically walk through the school door, to pretend their lives don't exist. And I think this is a controversial thing to say, but, you know, a kid is sick or hungry. If they don't care about learning to read, I think they're making a really rational decision. Some colleagues and I, several years ago, we published a book called Social Context Reform. It was a reaction to the no excuses kind of idea that there's no excuse, we just have to do in school. Poverty is an excuse.

[Noah Friedman]

Social Context Reform argues that we need social reform before worrying about education. So this would include things like universal health care, food security, job security, and housing security.

[Paul Thomas]

Now, in school, I think there are absolutely things we must do, especially at the early grades. I think we need smaller class size, Particularly once we identify students who are struggling. They should be guaranteed two things. Small class size and an experienced teacher. One of the dirty secrets of education is that the bad kids, the struggling kids, disproportionately are put in classrooms with beginning teachers. And there's kind of an unwritten rule that if you hang around as a teacher, they'll give you the good kids. And that's kind of criminal. To me. That's. I mean, that's just. And it's not a policy. It's just kind of a thing that happens. But if our struggling students were guaranteed smaller class size and experienced teachers, I think we would see some real growth. Now, the problem is, when you measure teacher impact, it's almost not there. Teacher impact on student achievements, about 1 to 14%. It's very small. So the problem is it's very hard to measure teacher impact. So two things can be true. Teachers are incredibly important, and it's not going to show up in the data. So as long as we stay obsessed with test scores, we're probably going to miss the good things we could be doing for reading. We need to quit buying programs. Like, I mean, we just need to stop it. I mean, constantly changing and buying. There's so much money, and I think there's a better approach. Oddly, I think we would be better off just buying children books There's a lot of research that access to text in the home and community and school are strong, strongly correlated with high literacy. I've said many times we should start buying every child at birth, you know, 20 books a year. Let the kid pick 10, let the family pick 10, and then the system picks 10. And you know, by the time you graduated high school, just imagine everybody would have a library. Honestly, that's not that much money and it's probably less money than we're spending on commercial programs.

[Noah Friedman]

My last question was, are you considering a run for 20, 28? He said no, but I don't know, maybe we can start it right here.

[Manny Fadal]

It's gotta be in someone's administration at least.

[Noah Friedman]

I know. What are you guys thoughts?

[Devin Joseph]

My boy Paul said we need to look ourselves in the mirror.

[Noah Friedman]

Schools are a reflection.

[Devin Joseph]

Schools are a reflection. I like that.

[Manny Fadal]

Of society. Of society, of society, not the other way around.

[Devin Joseph]

And now you're not a projection error. But I think that's so true is that if we as a society valued reading, the kids would be reading.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Devin Joseph]

They are not. Even if the, even if the teacher didn't assign them books, they would be at home reading. If we said reading is as cool as watching TikToks. And we really felt that as a society the kids will be at home.

[Noah Friedman]

And that goes to Jason's point too about just like the arc of entertainment. And we kept adding these things, but, you know, they don't disappear. But like there's obviously benefits to reading a book, you know, just as leisure and. Yeah. If we don't uphold that anywhere outside of learning for the. Learning for the test even.

[Jason Reynolds]

Yeah. Like.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah. Like why would you. Yeah.

[Devin Joseph]

We need to make books sexy again. In any form.

[Noah Friedman]

Any form.

[Jason Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah. Let me be clear.

[Devin Joseph]

Audiobooks, the issue is far beyond reading.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah. That's what I am. Say that we have a intellectual crisis. Brain crisis.

[Devin Joseph]

It's not cool to think about things now. It's not cool to do research. It's not cool to be an expert. It's not cool to know things now. It's cool to not know anything and say whatever you want.

[Noah Friedman]

You need to think about things.

[Manny Fadal]

Yeah. There doesn't seem to be about like a desire to be curious about stuff.

[Devin Joseph]

That's a beautiful way to say it.

[Manny Fadal]

It's just like. And why would you be curious about anything? It's all like just shown to you on your phone and, you know, just like the, the incentives are backwards.

[Devin Joseph]

We stopped rewarding curiosity in this society.

[Noah Friedman]

We need free thinkers not those types.

[Manny Fadal]

We need people who just are asking questions.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah. Yeah, let's ask more questions and answer them.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah. In an hour or less. Once a week. Preferably on Wednesdays.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah. The few minutes there for some ads. Yeah. I mean, in many ways I think we're right to a book.

[Manny Fadal]

It's basically a book.

[Devin Joseph]

Yeah.

[Manny Fadal]

We write a book a week, shoots the transcript out. That's text. Just read the show.

[Noah Friedman]

Boom. Yeah.

[Manny Fadal]

Give it a shot.

[Noah Friedman]

Yeah. Scroll down. You can. There's probably a transcript button if you would prefer to read our books every week.

[Manny Fadal]

We're coming out with a book every week. It's crazy.

[Noah Friedman]

Publishing is wild these days. No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope content. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne and Mangesh Hata Kadur. The show was created by Manny Fadal, Noah Friedman and Devin Joseph. Demon Credits song by Manny Mixing by Steve Bone thank you Steve. Our guests this week were Kelsey Khalid Felter, Jason Reynolds and Paul Thomas. Scroll down for links to their work and go to our newsletter at nosuchthing show for more, especially if you want to get deeper into the research Paul was discussing in the last bit of of the episode. If you have feedback for us or a question, our email is mannynoadevinmail.com or you can leave us a voicemail by calling the number in our show notes. If you like the show, please share it with a friend and leave us a 5 star nice review. Wherever you listen, it really helps us a lot to get to new people.

[Manny Fadal]

Bye.

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[Devin Joseph]

Different backgrounds, different beliefs, all of it. You don't agree on everything, but you got each other's backs.

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That's how it works.

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Go to bluesquarealliance.org, grab one share it. Be a good teammate.

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