Reading Achievement and the Long Tail of the Pandemic

The latest reading test results should be troubling to all.

I’m reacting to the PISA results that were recently issued (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2026). PISA – Programme for International Student Assessment – is the test used to compare nations in academic performance. These reading, math, and science results were from a 2025 test administered in 91 countries.

Usually, our concerns about PISA scores have had to do with how many countries have passed us this time in the reading ability of their 15-year-olds. Not this time. No, this year we held service – no new nations outdid us.

But only because almost everyone declined in reading this time around.

It appears to me that this nearly universal drop is mainly because of the 2020 pandemic. The first shock of the pandemic deprived most kids out of face-to-face teaching for a year or two. That certainly trimmed their reading sails.

But the aftershock of this kind of thing can be almost as humbling. Historical analyses of pandemics reveal that they leave in their wake a tsunami of antisocial and asocial behavior. That’s why we experienced increased crime rates that have only recently begun to come down in most places.

The asocial effects seem to be lingering longer. The schools of many countries have been experiencing the same chronic absenteeism rife in the United States. Many kids never returned to school after COVID and large numbers of those who did have spotty attendance (Barragan Torres, 2025; U.S. Department of Education, 2025).  

Time matters when it comes to learning. Fewer days, fewer hours, fewer lessons means lesser gains in academic achievement (Carroll, 1989; Fisher, Berliner, Filby, Marliave, Cahen, & Dishaw, 1981; Gay, Sonnenschein, Sun, & Baker, 2021; Smith, Lee, & Newmann, 2001; Walberg, Fraser, & Welch, 1986). 

The PISA report itself emphasizes an unfortunate decline in classroom discipline across the world since COVID. There is more misbehavior these days which reduces the amounts of instruction even for those kids who manage to show up.

PISA surveyed students and found them to be less curious about their world and to have less perseverance when it comes to learning. The kids admit that they often don’t complete school assignments because they find them boring. A contributor to the lower scores was the increased number of kids who rushed through the test items rather than trying to get them right.

Of course, kids aren’t the only ones who’ve been affected by the pandemic. Teachers and parents have too. Teacher absenteeism is up which is another real loss to kids (Miller, Murname, & Willett, 2007; National Council of Teacher Quality, 2014).  

I suspect parent’s educational resolve has weakened during these past few years. That’s at least part of the reason for the higher absenteeism.

“Mom, I don’t want to go to school today.”

“Okay.”

The student surveys indicate that less homework is being completed. Parents who in the past might have been firmer in discouraging screen time and promoting reading and homework now puzzles over whether it’s worth the trouble.

There’s more to it, of course. Phones and tablets have grown more ubiquitous, and social media and other sites that target kids have gained in their ability to entice and ensnare. Combine that with the uncertainty sewn among parents (“is it really necessary that I insist my kids read?”) and you see the problem. PISA reports that kids are reading less on their digital devices than they once did; it’s easier to play video games than to read. Why go to the trouble? (It should be noted that there is evidence that a big part of the screen time increase was also brought on by the pandemic (Mori, Silwal, Yunus, & Sourander, 2026; Resende, M. A. A., da Fonseca, de Freitas, Gesteira, & Rossato, 2023; Wu & Tsurumi, 2024).

On the PISA tests kids struggled with the longer texts. They had difficulty maintaining sustained attention and managing the coordination of information across a text. They had even greater problems when asked to read multiple texts.

I know some will take this as proof that kids need to be taught reading from books rather than from shorter selections. However, it’s important to note that the PISA passages that tripped kids up were 400+ plus words in length – much shorter than a typical short story, chapter, play, or excerpt common to reading textbooks.

What does matter?  

The PISA report points out that “the development of reading competencies depends heavily on repeated, sustained engagement with texts and on structured support from teachers, particularly when students are expected to make sense of complex material” (Oranisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2026, p. 99).

What will it take to reverse the reading decline?

First, we need kids— and teachers — to come to school. We need to reach out to parents and stress how important attendance is. We also need to make the effort with kids and parents to encourage home reading time. If discipline has slipped we must address that, too. Basically, we must get back to the amounts of reading and teaching that promoted greater learning.

Second, we must increase the amount of reading that kids are engaged in at school (Kent, Wanzek, & Al Otaiba, 2012). This means making certain that a significant amount of the 90 minutes or 2 hours of daily ELA time is devoted to reading and writing. Not to reading and writing instruction, but to kids engaging in reading and writing activity within that teaching. Kids should be reading in their science and social studies classes too, and wherever else reading makes sense in the curriculum.

Third, instruction should focus on more challenging texts than in the past (Shanahan, 2024). Kids need instructional support to succeed with such texts – support in the form of providing relevant background information or having kids reading multiple texts on a topic and offering guidance in how to make sense of the vocabulary, syntax, cohesion, and discourse structure, and in the use of helpful reading strategies. Avoid using AI to revise texts so students will find them easier and take steps to prevent or to discourage students from using AI to do the reading (and the thinking) for them.

Fourth, reading instruction needs to provide students with greater opportunities to build reading fluency – through the provision of sufficient decoding (Wang, Sabatini, O’Reilly, & Weeks, 2019; Yi,  Aitken, Sharp, Nusrat, & Sandbank, 2026) and morphology instruction (Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010), and through direct fluency work (e.g., repeated reading, paired reading, choral reading (Lee & Yoon, 2017)). Some kids may not need much decoding help per se, beyond the first two or three grades, while others are likely to require additional support with more complex words.

Fifth, there needs to be greater attention to encouraging and sustaining curiosity. That means that it is important to raise questions, not just to spout information. Above I encouraged an increase in the amount of reading, both in schools and out, but swaddle that reading in an “information gap.” Reward kids who wonder and who pursue their inquisitiveness. End reading lessons with student provided summaries of what was learned and why it matters.

When I was working on my book (Shanahan, 2024), I found it necessary to immerse myself in the history of schooling during the past century or so. The story of how the United States increased the hours, days, and years of schooling was fascinating. Initially, there were state and federal laws aimed at banning child labor and for making school attendance compulsory. Then, there were increases in the length of school years – from about 100 days to the 185 days that is now so common. Then laws prevented kids from leaving school before a certain age. Most recently, one of the major outcomes of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 was a big increase in the amounts of schooling accorded to African Americans.

Each of these big steps were important, but along the way, various states and local districts across the country promoted the idea of the importance of education. There were initiatives and efforts in local districts to ensure parent awareness of the value of schooling and the importance of home support for that schooling.

We were successful in those efforts. By 2020 our kids were getting more hours of school per capita than at any time in our history. Perhaps, we need to go back to those earlier efforts to ensure broad public support for our kids’ education. Our communities may need some reminders about why this all matters and what they can do to contribute to our children’s success.

Most of the history of literacy has been a slow, unsteady march forward. This pandemic has led to an unfortunate reversal in that progress. It is time to regain ground in our efforts at universal literacy.

References

Barragan Torres, M. (2025). The relation between absenteeism and student learning in a postpandemic context. Chicago, IL: Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative (IWERC), Discovery Partners Institute, University of Illinois. https://dpi.uillinois.edu/appliedresearch/iwerc/current-projects/learning-renewal/

Bowers, P., Kirby, J., & Deacon, H. (2010). The effects of morphological instruction on literacy skills: A systematic review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 80, 144-179. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654309359353

Carroll, J. B. (1989). The Carroll model: A 25-year retrospective and prospective view. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 26-31.

Fisher, C., Berliner, D., Filby, N., Marliave, R., Cahen, L., & Dishaw, M. (1981). Teaching behaviors, academic learning time, and student achievement: An overview. Journal of Classroom Instruction, 17(1), 2-15.

Gay, B., Sonnenschein, S., Sun, S., & Baker, L. (2021). Poverty, parent involvement, and children’s reading skills: Testing the compensatory effect of the amount of classroom reading instruction. Early Education and Development, 32(7), 981-993. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2020.1829292

Kent, S. C., Wanzek, J., & Al Otaiba, S. (2012). Amount of time in print reading in general education kindergarten classrooms: What does it look like for students at-risk for reading difficulties? 

Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 27(2), 56–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5826.2012.00351.x

Lee, J., & Yoon, S. Y. (2017). The effects of repeated reading on reading fluency for students with reading disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 50(2), 213–224. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219415605194

Miller, R. T., Murname, R. J., & Willett, J. B. (2007). Do teacher absences impact student achievement? Longitudinal evidence from one urban school district. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Mori, Y., Silwal, S., Yunus, W. M., & Sourander, A. (2026). Long-term trends in screen time use among children and adolescents: A systematic review including pre- and post-COVID periods. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13591045261432532

National Council of Teacher Quality. (2014). Roll call: The importance of teacher attendance. Washington, DC: Author.