Editorial: We know how to turn students into better readers. Why don't we do it?

More than half of California students can’t read at grade level, the latest set of scores from the state shows. It’s just the most recent sign in a too-long line of evidence that students aren’t learning this educational basic and are slipping further behind. The incremental progress made in years past was sent reeling backward during the pandemic.

That’s what made it particularly heart-sinking to see the figures from the spring 2023 round of testing. With everyone back at school for more than two years by then, and with some level of normalcy restored, there was reason to hope that reading scores would have reached, if not pre-pandemic levels, at least some level of improvement.

Instead, the percentage of grade-level readers crept down ever so slightly, from 47.1% to 46.7%.

If there’s one academic skill that students must master, reading is it. Literacy is a portal through which almost every other subject can be learned. Even math, at least theoretically.

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