Editorial: The joy of reading and the Illinois crisis stealing it away
Literacy is a gift we give our children. It's reading a poem by, say, Joseph Bruchac and understanding not just the words, but the emotions behind them: 'The old man must have stopped our car two dozen times to climb out and gather into his hands the small toads blinded by our lights and leaping, live drops of rain.'
The full poem, titled 'The Old Man,' is part of a real fourth-grade reading assignment on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a standardized test measuring student performance across the country. Students are asked to examine how the speaker and the old man feel about the toads and explain the difference using evidence from the poem.
This is one way the test assesses whether a child is proficient in reading. The unfortunate truth? Too many Illinois students are not.
In 2024, just 30% of fourth graders across Illinois were proficient in reading, according to the Nation's Report Card. In 2019, 34% of Illinois fourth graders were proficient in reading. That's a significant decline and a clear sign that our current approach is failing.
A proficient fourth grader can read a poem or story and describe how characters influence one another. They can make inferences from what they read. By contrast, a student who isn't proficient can't do either of those things and may only be able to determine the meaning of familiar words.
Every child who leaves school without the gift of literacy carries a burden — one that gets heavier as they get older. Without strong reading skills, school becomes frustrating. Learning turns into an experience of failure rather than discovery. Students lose confidence, disengage and fall further behind. Many eventually drop out, face job insecurity or even enter the criminal justice system.
This literacy crisis affects children across the state — from East St. Louis to Springfield to the Chicago suburbs. The pandemic accelerated the decline, but our educational shortcomings were evident long before that. The question is: What are we going to do about it?
State lawmakers had a chance to help low-income students by renewing the Invest in Kids Act, a scholarship program that helped children attend private schools that better fit their needs. But in 2024, Illinois legislators let it expire, stripping thousands of students of educational options.
Now, a new opportunity has emerged.
Republicans in Congress have introduced the Educational Choice for Children Act, a federal program that would provide tax-credit scholarships for K-12 students nationwide. Like Invest in Kids, this initiative would offer families a lifeline if their public school isn't meeting their child's needs.
Of course, Chicago Teachers Union leadership will oppose this — but the reality is that school choice remains popular in Illinois, with a majority of residents supporting the concept. More importantly, choice introduces accountability into a system that, for decades, has faced little real competition.
Martin West, academic dean at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, sees a troubling trend in national test scores.
NAEP data from the mid-1990s through 2010 showed progress in reading and math, particularly among low-income students. What changed?
'That was a period where there was more consistent emphasis on standards-based reform and holding schools accountable,' West told us. 'Most observers would agree that there's been a softening of accountability since then.'
He's right. Schools, like any institution, need incentives to improve. Right now, there are no consequences when a school fails to prepare the majority of its students to read and do math at grade level. But when families have the option to leave, schools have to find a way to improve outcomes or risk losing students. That's what educational choice provides: a system that rewards excellence, rather than perpetuating failure.
To be clear, though, we just as strongly support excellence in Illinois public schools and think every kid should have access to top-tier reading instruction.
But the Nation's Report Card is clear: Illinois students are struggling. They need options. They need accountability. And they need a system that prioritizes their futures, not the politics of the adults in charge.
If we continue down this path, we will continue robbing children of their potential. Literacy should not be a privilege — it should be a guarantee for all of Illinois' young people. And we have a shared responsibility to make sure every child receives that gift.
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Conventional turnout methods—door knocking and phone calls, for example—can still have a big impact in low-turnout races, such as primaries, special elections, and campaigns for local office. But with the parties now spending more than $1 billion on the presidential campaign every four years, they've seen diminishing returns on each individual mobilization tactic. Vote Forward emerged out of a letter-writing experiment conducted during the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama, a deep-red state where the Democrat Doug Jones narrowly defeated Roy Moore, a former judge who had been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by several women. The turnout rate for people who received handwritten messages was three points higher than for those who did not. 'That was the holy cow,' Radjy said. 'This is a tactic that can really, really move the needle.' The impact of the group's letter-writing program has decreased over time, Radjy told me. Vote Forward found that its letters had no effect on the initial group of 'surge voters,' people who had participated in at least one major election since 2016. But the organization was able to expand its program to additional groups, mainly newly registered voters. Among these groups, the campaign boosted turnout by 0.16 percentage points, enough for Radjy to consider that part of the effort a success, because it was similar to the average effect for all previous measured presidential-election turnout programs. Vote Forward estimates that it drove an additional 9,000 voters to the polls nationwide. As paltry as that number might seem, it's larger than the total margin of victory in the battle for control of the House during each of the past two elections. The letter-writing program is also relatively inexpensive, costing about $175,000. The group has concluded that although it will still use the tactic in small campaigns, it likely will not do so in the same way in 2028. 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