Tangle Podcast: PREVIEW – The Friday Edition – Rebuilding a Literate America

Host: Audrey Moorhead (Associate Editor)
Date: March 6, 2026
Duration: Preview up to 11:01
Theme: Examining America's modern literacy crisis, reasons for declining reading comprehension, and surprising regional progress in elementary education.

Episode Overview

In this special Friday Edition preview from the “Tangle” podcast, associate editor Audrey Moorhead delivers a thoughtful, in-depth reflection on the ongoing literacy crisis in America—especially among Generation Z and younger students. Drawing from recent articles, personal academic experience, and national testing data, Moorhead explores why reading comprehension is plummeting, what this means for the fabric of American democracy, and where glimmers of hope can be found in surprising places, especially the American South.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. A Troubling Study of College Students’ Reading Comprehension

• Highlighting Natalie Wexler’s findings (01:35-03:30)

  • Moorhead recounts a study from Wexler’s Substack, "Minding the Gap", involving 85 English majors at two Kansas universities.

  • Students read the opening of Dickens' Bleak House and had to explain it in plain English, with access to dictionaries and phones.

  • Only 4 demonstrated comprehensive understanding; 32 showed competence but understood less than half; the majority could not comprehend the text at all.

  • “Even in this open book environment, only four of the 85 students demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of the text.” (Audrey Moorhead, 02:35)

  • Insight: Difficulty was due not just to old-fashioned language, but a deep unfamiliarity with words, phrases, and prose style—students simply gave up trying to understand.

2. Echoes from Elite Institutions

• Reflections on The New Yorker’s “The End of The English Major” (03:30-05:00)
  • Recalling Nathan Heller’s 2023 New Yorker piece, which caused debate across Harvard’s campus, Moorhead points out that even at elite schools, interest and ability in English are waning.
  • Professors discussed undergraduates’ inability to parse 19th-century syntax and more alarming, complete failures elsewhere.
  • “Misunderstanding this archaic syntax is an easier problem to address than... total inability to comprehend Dickens. It’s still likely a symptom of the same underlying condition, a systemic educational failure to teach students to engage with difficult texts.” (03:45)

3. Literacy Crisis: A National Phenomenon

• Generation Z and the “Death of Deep Reading” (05:00-06:30)

  • A wealth of articles and studies suggest Gen Z is reading less and understanding less, with literacy rates in very noticeable decline.

  • “The full breadth of reporting and research depicts an American generation in a full-blown literacy crisis.” (05:50)

  • Societal Impact: Lower literacy rates spell trouble for American democracy and society, undermining the ability to understand laws, foundational texts, and the reasons behind the nation’s successes.

4. Signs of Hope: Surging Success in the South

• Rising Elementary Scores in Unexpected States (06:30-07:30)

  • Moorhead identifies dramatic improvements among elementary students in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee—outpacing per-pupil-spending-heavy states like California and Vermont.

  • Mississippi’s turnaround was so pronounced their state superintendent was recruited to help Maryland.

  • “Elementary schoolers in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee are improving in reading scores at astonishing rates, outpacing states like California and Vermont.” (07:02)

  • Significance: These stories offer hope, suggesting the literacy crisis can be reversed.

Deep Dive: The Structural Problems Facing Literacy

5. Analyzing the Roots: Academic Decline and Achievement Gaps

• Test Scores and Achievement Divergence (08:59-10:00)
  • Drawing from a 2025 analysis by Chad Altman at The74, Moorhead underscores: American student achievement (across reading and other subjects) peaked in the mid-2010s, then declined sharply, exacerbated by COVID-19.
  • “…high achieving students are doing about as well as they were, but struggling students are falling further and further behind.” (09:25)

6. Understanding Literacy Instruction Failures

• The “Simple View of Reading” (10:00-11:01)

  • The widely-accepted Simple View of Reading charts two key elements: word recognition (decoding) and language comprehension.

  • Altman finds breakdowns in both areas are driving the crisis.

  • Historically, American schools used phonics for “decoding,” teaching kids to recognize letters and graphemes by sound. In the mid-20th century, "whole language" methods took hold, focusing on recognizing entire words instead—diminishing phonics’ role.

  • “For centuries, decoding was taught via phonics…until roughly the mid-20th century with the rise of whole language teaching…” (10:38)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Increasingly, young Americans aren’t comprehending the things they read.” — Audrey Moorhead [03:05]
• “A systemic educational failure to teach students to engage with difficult texts.” — Audrey Moorhead [03:45]
• “Lower literacy rates mean a decline in the ability to understand the world around us, including the laws and political texts upon which this country was built.” — Audrey Moorhead [06:38]
• “Elementary schoolers in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee are improving in reading scores at astonishing rates…” — Audrey Moorhead [07:02]
• “…struggling students are falling further and further behind.” — Audrey Moorhead [09:25]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:35 – Introduction to the main topic and the Dickens comprehension study
• 03:30 – Reflections on broader academic decline from The New Yorker’s reporting
• 06:30 – The American South’s surprising literacy gains
• 08:59 – Altman analysis on post-2010s achievement and COVID impact
• 10:00 – Breakdown of the “Simple View of Reading,” phonics vs. whole language

Tone & Style

Moorhead’s delivery is thoughtful, concerned, and research-driven—combining personal anecdotes with data and revealed trends. The episode is presented with urgency but also tempered by optimism, especially in discussing successful reforms in southern states. The style is accessible, even when discussing academic research.

Summary

This episode preview of “Tangle” offers an incisive, evidence-based exploration of the growing literacy crisis in America. Audrey Moorhead underscores the alarming decline in reading comprehension among young Americans—supported by firsthand academic observations, nationwide studies, and expert reporting—and connects these trends to changes in foundational education practices. Yet, the episode balances concern with hope, using the success stories from southern elementary schools as inspiration for broader reform.

Listeners and readers are left with a sense of both the gravity of the crisis and the possibility for meaningful improvement through dedicated, evidence-based educational strategies.