The End of Reading Is Here
A wide-ranging account of the shift from sustained reading toward a post-literate culture built around fragments, audio, video, and screens.
Save the Novel
Collecting and broadcasting stories about why we read literature.
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Why Literature Matters
Research and reporting that make the case for sustained reading as an urgent cultural and educational practice.
The Reading Landscape
Two recent reports put the long decline in reading into immediate public view.
“Post-literate age”: Why fewer Americans are reading for pleasure
A public conversation about declining reading for pleasure and the cultural questions raised by The Atlantic’s reporting.
What Americans Read
National surveys show both the scale of the change and the reading habits behind it.
Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America
Drawn from a Census Bureau survey of more than 17,000 adults, this landmark report tracks declines in voluntary reading of novels, stories, plays, and poetry.
What Kids Are Reading
Large-scale reading records reveal what K-12 students actually choose or are assigned, how reading changes by grade, and how much time students spend with books.
Standards, Curriculum, and the Classroom
These sources document what standards ask for, how curricula interpret them, and what teachers use.
Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts
The primary standards separate literature from informational text while distributing reading expectations across English, history, science, and technical subjects.
The weak critique of Common Core’s approach to great literature
A defense of the standards from within the education-reform movement, arguing that the widely cited 70/30 split applies across subjects and does not direct English teachers to abandon literature.
Uncommonly Engaging? A Review of the EngageNY English Language Arts Common Core Curriculum
A generally favorable review that also flags a consequential weakness: the curriculum often favors excerpts and leaves too little time for whole novels.
Reading Full Books in Secondary English Language Arts Classrooms
A nationally representative survey finds that full-book reading remains peripheral in most secondary English classrooms: about two-thirds of teachers assigned only one to four books in 2024–2025.
American Instructional Resources Surveys: 2021 Technical Documentation and Survey Results
National teacher survey results show how frequently English language arts teachers create their own resources and draw from online materials beyond a core curriculum.
In the Fight Over How to Teach Reading, This Guru Makes a Major Retreat
Reporting on Lucy Calkins and the science-of-reading debate shows how instructional ideas, research, and adopted curricula reshape classroom practice at national scale.
The Purpose of Literature
Essays and professional statements return the discussion to what happens between a reader and a work of literature.
Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?
Edmundson asks students to treat books as possible sources of truth and transformation, not merely objects for academic analysis.
Against Readings
An argument against treating literature chiefly as material for a prefabricated analytical framework, and for restoring the direct encounter between reader and work.
Resolution on the Study of Literature
NCTE opposes curricula that reduce literature to facts and argues for the deeper work of engaging texts and integrating meaning with students’ lives.
Resolution on the Essential Roles and Value of Literature in the Curriculum
NCTE calls for deep, extended experiences with full authentic texts and affirms reading literature for appreciation, learning, enjoyment, and personal fulfillment.
Statement on Independent Reading
A research-grounded case for protected reading time, student choice, access to books, reading stamina, and the development of habitual lifelong readers.