Category: NAEP

  • Student-created book reviews inspire a global reading culture

    Student-created book reviews inspire a global reading culture

    Key points:

    When students become literacy influencers, reading transforms from a classroom task into a global conversation.

    When teens take the mic

    Recent studies show that reading for pleasure among teens is at an all-time low. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), only 14 percent of U.S. students read for fun almost every day–down from 31 percent in 1984. In the UK, the National Literacy Trust reports that just 28 percent of children aged 8 to 18 said they enjoyed reading in their free time in 2023.

    With reading engagement in crisis, one group of teens decided to flip the narrative–by turning on their cameras. What began as a simple classroom project to encourage reading evolved into a movement that amplified student voices, built confidence, and connected learners across cultures.

    Rather than writing traditional essays or book reports, my students were invited to create short video book reviews of their favorite titles–books they genuinely loved, connected with, and wanted others to discover. The goal? To promote reading in the classroom and beyond. The result? A library of student-led recommendations that brought books–and readers–to life.

    Project overview: Reading, recording, and reaching the world

    As an ESL teacher, I’ve always looked for ways to make literacy feel meaningful and empowering, especially for students navigating a new language and culture. This video review project began with a simple idea: Let students choose a book they love, and instead of writing about it, speak about it. The assignment? Create a short, personal, and authentic video to recommend the book to classmates–and potentially, to viewers around the world.

    Students were given creative freedom to shape their presentations. Some used editing apps like Filmora9 or Canva, while others recorded in one take on a smartphone. I offered a basic outline–include the book’s title and author, explain why you loved it, and share who you’d recommend it to–but left room for personal flair.

    What surprised me most was how seriously students took the project. They weren’t just completing an assignment–they were crafting their voices, practicing communication skills, and taking pride in their ability to share something they loved in a second language.

    Student spotlights: Book reviews with heart, voice, and vision

    Each student’s video became more than a book recommendation–it was an expression of identity, creativity, and confidence. With a camera as their platform, they explored their favorite books and communicated their insights in authentic, impactful ways.

    Mariam ElZeftawy: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
    Watch Miriam’s Video Review

    Mariam led the way with a polished and emotionally resonant video review of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. Using Filmora9, she edited her video to flow smoothly while keeping the focus on her heartfelt reflections. Mariam spoke with sincerity about the novel’s themes: love, illness, and the fragility of life. She communicated them in a way that was both thoughtful and relatable. Her work demonstrated not only strong literacy skills but also digital fluency and a growing sense of self-expression.

    Dana: Dear Tia by Maria Zaki
    Watch Dana’s Video Review

    In one of the most touching video reviews, Dana, a student who openly admits she’s not an avid reader, chose to spotlight “Dear Tia,” written by Maria Zaki, her best friend’s sister. The personal connection to the author didn’t just make her feel seen; it made the book feel more real, more urgent, and worth talking about. Dana’s honest reflection and warm delivery highlight how personal ties to literature can spark unexpected enthusiasm.

    Farah Badawi: Utopia by Ahmed Khaled Towfik
    Watch Farah’s Video Review

    Farah’s confident presentation introduced her classmates to Utopia, a dystopian novel by Egyptian author Ahmed Khaled Towfik. Through her review, she brought attention to Arabic literature, offering a perspective that is often underrepresented in classrooms. Farah’s choice reflected pride in her cultural identity, and her delivery was clear, persuasive, and engaging. Her video became more than a review–it was a form of cultural storytelling that invited her peers to expand their literary horizons.

    Rita Tamer: Frostblood
    Watch Rita’s Video Review

    Rita’s review of Frostblood, a fantasy novel by Elly Blake, stood out for its passionate tone and concise storytelling. She broke down the plot with clarity, highlighting the emotional journey of the protagonist while reflecting on themes like power, resilience, and identity. Rita’s straightforward approach and evident enthusiasm created a strong peer-to-peer connection, showing how even a simple, sincere review can spark curiosity and excitement about reading.

    Literacy skills in action

    Behind each of these videos lies a powerful range of literacy development. Students weren’t just reviewing books–they were analyzing themes, synthesizing ideas, making connections, and articulating their thoughts for an audience. By preparing for their recordings, students learned how to organize their ideas, revise their messages for clarity, and reflect on what made a story impactful to them personally.

    Speaking to a camera also encouraged students to practice intonation, pacing, and expression–key skills in both oral language development and public speaking. In multilingual classrooms, these skills are often overlooked in favor of silent writing tasks. But in this project, English Learners were front and center, using their voices–literally and figuratively–to take ownership of language in a way that felt authentic and empowering.

    Moreover, the integration of video tools meant students had to think critically about how they presented information visually. From editing with apps like Filmora9 to choosing appropriate backgrounds, they were not just absorbing content, they were producing and publishing it, embracing their role as creators in a digital world.

    Tips for teachers: Bringing book reviews to life

    This project was simple to implement and required little more than student creativity and access to a recording device. Here are a few tips for educators who want to try something similar:

    • Let students choose their own books: Engagement skyrockets when they care about what they’re reading.
    • Keep the structure flexible: A short outline helps, but students thrive when given room to speak naturally.
    • Offer tech tools as optional, not mandatory: Some students enjoyed using Filmora9 or Canva, while others used the camera app on their phone.
    • Focus on voice and message, not perfection: Encourage students to focus on authenticity over polish.
    • Create a classroom premiere day: Let students watch each other’s videos and celebrate their peers’ voices.

    Literacy is personal, public, and powerful

    This project proved what every educator already knows: When students are given the opportunity to express themselves in meaningful ways, they rise to the occasion. Through book reviews, my students weren’t just practicing reading comprehension, they were becoming speakers, storytellers, editors, and advocates for literacy.

    They reminded me and will continue to remind others that when young people talk about books in their own voices, with their personal stories woven into the narrative, something beautiful happens: Reading becomes contagious.

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  • Across All Ages & Demographics, Test Results Show Americans Are Getting Dumber – The 74

    Across All Ages & Demographics, Test Results Show Americans Are Getting Dumber – The 74


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    There’s no way to sugarcoat it: Americans have been getting dumber.

    Across a wide range of national and international tests, grade levels and subject areas, American achievement scores peaked about a decade ago and have been falling ever since. 

    Will the new NAEP scores coming out this week show a halt to those trends? We shall see. But even if those scores indicate a slight rebound off the COVID-era lows, policymakers should seek to understand what caused the previous decade’s decline. 

    There’s a lot of blame to go around, from cellphones and social media to federal accountability policies. But before getting into theories and potential solutions, let’s start with the data.

    Until about a decade ago, student achievement scores were rising. Researchers at Education Next found those gains were broadly shared across racial and economic lines, and achievement gaps were closing. But then something happened, and scores started to fall. Worse, they fell faster for lower-performing students, and achievement gaps started to grow.

    This pattern shows up on test after test. Last year, we looked at eighth grade math scores and found growing achievement gaps in 49 of 50 states, the District of Columbia and 17 out of 20 large cities with sufficient data.

    But it’s not just math, and it’s not just NAEP. The American Enterprise Institute’s Nat Malkus has documented the same trend in reading, history and civics. Tests like NWEA’s MAP Growth and Curriculum Associates’ i-Ready are showing it too. And, as Malkus found in a piece released late last year, this is a uniquely American problem. The U.S. now leads the world in achievement gap growth.

    What’s going on? How can students here get back on track? Malkus addresses these questions in a new report out last week and makes the point that any honest reckoning with the causes and consequences of these trends must account for the timing, scope and magnitude of the changes.

    Theory #1: It’s accountability

    As I argued last year, my top explanation has been the erosion of federal accountability policies. In 2011 and 2012, the Obama administration began issuing waivers to release states from the most onerous requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. Congress made those policies permanent in the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act. That timing fits, and it makes sense that easing up on accountability, especially for low-performing students, led to achievement declines among those same kids.

    However,  there’s one problem with this explanation: American adults appear to be suffering from similar achievement declines. In results that came out late last year, the average scores of Americans ages 16 to 65 fell in both literacy and numeracy on the globally administered Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. 

    And even among American adults, achievement gaps are growing. The exam’s results are broken down into six performance levels. On the numeracy portion, for example, the share of Americans scoring at the two highest levels rose two points, from 10% to 12%, while the percentage of those at the bottom two levels rose from 29% to 34%. In literacy, the percentage of Americans scoring at the top two levels fell from 14% to 13%, while the lowest two levels rose from 19% to 28%. 

    These results caused Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, to comment, “There’s a dwindling middle in the United States in terms of skills.” Carr could have made the same comment about K-12 education —  except that these results can’t be explained by school-related causes.

    Theory #2: It’s the phones

    The rise of smartphones and social media, and the decline in reading for pleasure, could be contributing to these achievement declines. Psychologist Jean Twenge pinpointed 2012 as the first year when more than half of Americans owned a smartphone, which is about when achievement scores started to decline. This theory also does a better job of explaining why Americans of all ages are scoring lower on achievement tests.

    But there are some holes in this explanation. For one, why are some of the biggest declines seen in the youngest kids? Are that many 9-year-olds on Facebook or Instagram? Second, why are the lowest performers suffering the largest declines in achievement? Attention deficits induced by phones and screens should affect all students in similar ways, and yet the pattern shows the lowest performers are suffering disproportionately large drops.

    But most fundamentally, why is this mostly a U.S. trend? Smartphones and social media are global phenomena, and yet scores in Australia, England, Italy, Japan and Sweden have all risen over the last decade. A couple of other countries have seen some small declines (like Finland and Denmark), but no one has else seen declines like we’ve had here in the States.

    Other theories: Immigration, school spending or the Common Core

    Other theories floating around have at least some kernels of truth. Immigration trends could explain some portion of the declines, although it’s not clear why those would be affecting scores only now. The Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli has partly blamed America’s “lost decade” on economic factors, but school spending has rebounded sharply in recent years without similar gains in achievement. Others, including historian Diane Ravitch and the Pioneer Institute’s Theodor Rebarber, blame the shift to the Common Core state standards, which was happening about the same time. But non-Common Core states suffered similar declines, and scores have also dropped in non-Common Core subjects.

    Note that COVID is not part of my list. It certainly exacerbated achievement declines and reset norms within schools, but achievement scores were already falling well before it hit America’s shores.

    Instead of looking for one culprit, it could be a combination of these factors. It could be that the rise in technology is diminishing Americans’ attention spans and stealing their focus from books and other long-form written content. Meanwhile, schools have been de-emphasizing basic skills, easing up on behavioral expectations and making it easier to pass courses. At the same time, policymakers in too many parts of the country have stopped holding schools accountable for the performance of all students.

    That’s a potent mix of factors that could explain these particular problems. It would be helpful to have more research to pinpoint problems and solutions, but if this diagnosis is correct, it means students, teachers, parents and policymakers all have a role to play in getting achievement scores back on track. 


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