The news about the reading ability of high school students is alarming. According to results from an exam called the National Assessment of Educational Progress – a test thought as as “the nation’s report card” – reading levels have fallen since 1992. (The results of the test, broken down by demographic group, are here and are quite interesting.)

The percentage of 12th graders lacking even rudimentary reading skills (like, for example, being able to decipher information about train fares from a brochure) jumped to 27 percent in 2005 from 20 percent in 1992. In other words, a full quarter of high school students are functionally illiterate.

In the same time period, the percentage of students who are proficient in reading fell by five percent.

It’s a shame that changing this situation, that increasing funding and boosting education levels, isn’t a higher priority. To think that all those hundreds of billions we’ve spent in Iraq could have been spent right here, on our very own kids. There are now plans to increase the size of the military. We don’t need that as badly as we need to bolster the strength of our educational system.