Texas public-school teacher Darius Williams is right to weep for his English students: Few things could be more tragic than a roomful of 17- and 18-year-olds left illiterate by the schools they and their parents trusted — or paint an uglier picture of our stifled, stunted future.
Williams went viral last week for his heartfelt Instagram plea over America’s dysfunctional public-education system: He found that the kids he had come in to teach couldn’t competently read and interpret two paragraphs — not even answer a basic question he had “basically completed” for them.
The video is hard but necessary watching; he can hardly get his words out for his tears.
Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress more than justify Williams’ tears of frustration: Houston, where he teaches, sees some 44% of students reading at a “below basic” level in 8th grade (only 20% rate “proficient”); 51% below basic in math.
In Baltimore, less than half of 8th graders make the “basic” level in reading, less than a third in math.
In Chicago, 37% of 8th graders fall below basic in reading and more than half in math; in Philly, it’s 50% and 62%.
This is the result of concentrated indifference from systems that have known for years that students can’t read or do math, yet keep moving them along anyway.
Black and Latino kids drive a disproportionate amount of the low scoring, indicating where schools are failing the most — a fact Williams specifically laments.
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Yet the disaster isn’t only in inner-city schools; it’s everywhere — and the damning results are now showing up at the college level.
Per an end-of-2025 report out of UC-San Diego, an elite public university, “Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below high school level increased nearly thirtyfold.”
Berkeley, possibly the world’s best public university, has students that can’t manage to read more than five pages per day per course.
At elite private colleges — Columbia, Georgetown, Princeton and beyond — professors find their students not merely unable to understand and debate complex texts, but unable to read them in full at all.
We’re bankrupting our future; all too soon, Darius Williams won’t be the only one weeping.
