As NAEP scores are in the news, I am resharing a post I wrote a few months back. How to increase literacy in schools? Scrap the overly technical focus on test-score standards, a boring approach that limits the amount of reading that is done each year. Improving the quality of how students interact with texts would not only raise reading engagement, but it would attract more teachers into the profession. Many commentators are talking about classroom discipline. It would be much easier to get a class of students to focus on learning a substantive text, as opposed to getting them to practice multiple-choice question formats that will show up on a state test that is practically meaningless to them. Finally, I think it is time to get serious about cracking down on smartphone/social media access. Schools should work with parents to set and enforce age-appropriate guidelines (at home and at school). I have to think that this plays a role in the declining literacy scores as measured by the NAEP.