Youth Reading Scores Are Going Down - The Tyee

The Programme for International Student Evaluation, or PISA, has become a big deal for school systems around the world. ANNOUNCEMENTS, EVENTS & MORE FROM TYEE AND SELECT PARTNERS Take a Trip with Us: VIFF’s Documentary Series Spans the Globe ‘Insights’ takes audiences far and wide with stories of struggle, triumph and renewal. Run by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, PISA started in 2000 and is administered every three years. It tests 15-year-old students in over 90 countries on their proficiency in science, math and reading. Recent PISA scores have shown a notable decrease in reading proficiency. “Between 2018 and 2025, reading performance fell in three-quarters of education systems with comparable data, across the OECD by 25 score points — more than a year of learning,” wrote OECD education and skills director Andreas Schleicher in the introduction to PISA 2025, released Sept. 8. “The biggest surprise is who fell furthest behind. It was not the most disadvantaged students, but those from wealthy families. This finding points to a much broader challenge than inequality alone.” A shift to digital reading may have academic impacts Canada did relatively well this time compared to most of the global competition. But our scores are still lower than they were three years ago — and three years before that. Since 2000, Canada’s reading has fallen from 534 to 490, according to PISA 2025. Its science score has dropped from 534 to 510. And math is down from 532 to 485. A drop of 25 points, Schleicher notes, is equal to the loss of a school year. Still, Canada’s scores this year are above the OECD average. Schleicher identifies several likely causes for the decline in reading scores. “We cannot say for sure,” he writes, “but declining levels of reading for enjoyment and the shift towards digital reading — skimming social media feeds and rapidly processing information — may be compromising the ability of students to engage with complex texts and data.” He goes on to say: “This raises questions about whether devices such as smartphones — designed to maximize a user’s attention — are compatible with sustained academic attention.” The answers to those questions are a resounding no, almost every time. A different experience online In the 1990s, I taught in a computer-based college program for what we still called “multimedia.” I was exhilarated by the speed with which computers could both access and create educational material,…