Beyond the Averages

A K-Shaped Reading Crisis by Rachel Bachman
Substack: Excuse My Whimsy, September 27, 2026

Many education articles discuss the decline in reading skills and the drop in how much children and teens read for pleasure. Young people are reading less, on average, while national and international assessments report falling reading scores. But what if the average, a single statistic, is limiting our understanding of what is really happening? Rachel Bachman, a children's librarian, describes a daily experience that illustrates the problem. Some children visit the library as though they were visiting the dentist, while others come regularly and happily, voraciously reading their way through the collection. Looking more closely at the data, Bachman finds that reading achievement is not moving in the same direction for all students. NAEP data show that, compared with 1992, fourth-grade students at the lower percentiles scored worse in 2024, while those at the higher percentiles scored better. The national average obscures these differences, making it harder to understand which students are struggling and how their needs differ. Bachman offers a deeper understanding of reading issues, and she explores the implications of these widening differences. Teachers face an increasingly wide range of reading abilities, making it difficult to find a novel that works for an entire class or to provide different books without adding considerably to their workload. Librarians need collections that accommodate a broad range of interests and reading levels. Educational leaders, in turn, need to understand the data for their own schools and communities and support teachers and librarians as they respond to these differences. Bachman's central argument is that there is no single reading crisis affecting all children in the same way. Understanding what is happening requires looking beyond the average and paying closer attention to the students at either end of the distribution.