The “Make Everyone Below Average” Crisis: How America’s Top Schools Are Dumbing Down Literacy

By Stephen Moore | Tuesday, December 16, 2025 at 4:36 p.m. EST

Reading and math scores are abysmal nationally, as testing results keep documenting. The number of 16- to 24-year-olds reading at the lowest literacy levels increased from 16% in 2017 to 25% in 2023, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

In some inner-city schools, less than half of kids are reading or doing math at grade-level proficiency. Many high school graduates cannot read their diplomas.

As an economist, I would submit that this is our greatest crisis. It puts the future of American prosperity in grave danger. Also, the learning gap widens income and wealth disparities.

The apparent solution among the education establishment is not to challenge kids to stretch their minds and hit the books but rather to dumb down the curriculum so everyone passes. I call this the “make everyone below average” solution.

Some schools are now no longer requiring students in English class to read cover-to-cover classic books that they have been reading for decades. Perhaps the students don’t have the attention spans. Perhaps their reading skills aren’t up to par. Perhaps they are too busy texting or playing video games on their cellphones.

A case in point is what has happened at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, D.C. This school is one of the best public schools in the city, with reading proficiency rates at 80%, double the District’s abysmal 38% average.

Alice Deal has decided to remove all full-length novels from their eighth-grade English curriculum. The education establishment behind this strategy claims that moving from full-length books to section readings will better prepare students for high school.

How is it better for reading proficiency and knowledge gathering for a student to read sections of “Huckleberry Finn” or “To Kill a Mockingbird” but not the whole book? Would anyone watch only a few scenes of a movie? It’s almost as if the school is instructing 13-year-olds to read the CliffsNotes version of “The Scarlet Letter” or “A Man for All Seasons.”

That used to be considered a form of cheating. But now it’s the schools that are cheating the kids. If it’s true that reading a full-length novel is now too heavy a lift for sixth, seventh, or eighth graders, Houston—we have a problem. If the kids in top public schools can’t be expected to read a full-length book, it’s scary to think about the reading levels at other schools.

We solved the problem of illiteracy nearly 100 years ago. Now the problem is back. This is yet another sad example of subjecting our children to the tyranny of low expectations. It is sadly symbolic of all that is wrong with government-run schools.

Ironically, this trend is coming at a time when poor states like Louisiana and Mississippi have returned to basics—like good old-fashioned phonics—and have seen miraculous jumps in their reading scores. They are now beating out higher-income blue states.

We all remember with fondness reading our favorite books—like “The Outsiders.” The joy of reading comes from reading a great book and learning its life message. Kids are now being robbed of that joy. Washington, D.C., will reap the illiteracy it sows, and my only hope is that other schools don’t participate in this dumbing down of America’s children.

Stephen Moore is a former Trump senior economic adviser and co-founder of Unleash Prosperity, which advocates for education freedom for all children.