On a crisp, sunny morning in late January, retired broadcast journalist Martin Fletcher stood before a crowded assembly of students at secondary school Lic. Leobino Zavala Camarena in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. As a renowned war correspondent, Fletcher for decades ventured into the most dangerous places in the world, dodging bullets, observing famine, and reporting on HIV-positive children, many themselves orphaned by AIDS.
No such peril greeted Fletcher at Leobino Zavala, but his visit did address a crisis: Convincing teenagers and elementary students that regular reading — books, not screens — would change the course of their lives.
In January, Fletcher gave a writing workshop to students of secondary school Lic. Leobino Zavala Camarena in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
He had his work cut out for him. Just a smattering of hands shot up when Fletcher asked how many students regularly read more than 15 minutes a day.
Fletcher caught students’ interest with some attention-grabbing video clips of his work, explaining that what set his storytelling apart was his focus on the “little story” inside the “big story.” In other words, when a news network assigned him to cover a big event like an invasion or a mass displacement of refugees, he made it a point to include the little stories of everyday people impacted by the event — like the little girl in a red dress he described wandering alone as hurled rocks and bullets rained down during an Israeli-Palestinian clash.
Students gasped as Fletcher matter-of-factly shared that he reads at least four hours every day. He told them it’s what fueled his Pulitzer and Emmy award-winning reporting, and his authorship of an impressive number of fiction and nonfiction books.
Fletcher’s pep talk with the Mexican students would be equally as relevant north of the United States-Mexico border.
The latest United States’ NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores and Mexico’s 2022 PISA scores (Programme for International Student Assessment) reveal a stark reality: the United States and Mexico are failing to provide their students with the literacy skills needed to thrive in a modern world.
On the 2022 PISA exam, Mexican students ranked 49th internationally in reading, scoring 415 points — well below the OECD average of 487. This places Mexico among the lowest-performing countries globally, with one-third of students at the lowest proficiency levels.
Today’s Special Edition of The New Reality Roundup is out, focused on the release of the 2024 NAEP scores.
“The news is not good,” Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, told Chalkbeat. “Student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic… pic.twitter.com/MBWZqtnJpF
— 50CAN (@FiftyCAN) January 29, 2025
At the same time, their American neighbors’ NAEP scores fell to historic lows in 2024, with a widening gap between high and low-performing students.
In Mexico, one in three third-grade students cannot comprehend what they read. In the U.S., 40% of fourth-grade students fail to meet even basic grade-level reading standards. In reading on the PISA test, 20% of American 15-year-olds read at a 10-year-old’s level.
Globally, top-performing nations like Singapore and Japan consistently surpass 500 points in PISA assessments, demonstrating that the literacy crises in the U.S. and Mexico are indicative of policy failures.
Literacy is foundational for economic opportunity, informed citizenship and personal well-being. Without urgent reforms and investments in evidence-based practices, millions of students in both countries will remain unprepared for the challenges of adulthood. Skilled workers are in short supply in key sectors on both sides of the border. This is not just an education issue — it’s a societal crisis. The time for complacency has passed.
To align Plan México − President Claudia Sheinbaum’s new, ambitious six-year strategy to turn around Mexico’s industrial policy and reduce Chinese imports into North America − with Mexico’s literacy crisis and job creation goals, some of the Plan’s $277 billion-dollar investment should be allocated to improving literacy rates and basic education.
The Plan’s goal to train 150,000 professionals annually should include integrating literacy and foundational skills into technical education programs. This would ensure that workers are equipped for specialized manufacturing and strategic industries like AI and green technology.
Sheinbaum wants to make Mexico 10th largest economy in the world with ‘Plan México’
In the U.S., uncertainty about the future of the federal Department of Education could compound the literacy crisis.
But the nascent Trump administration — among its otherwise shocking activities — has already eased onerous Biden-era administrative rules designed to suppress public charter school growth. Public charter schools are popular with Hispanic families in the United States. In fact, they represent the largest enrollment growth in the sector, increasing by more than 200,000 students from 2019 to 2024 — a staggering growth rate of 18.69%. That’s likely because charter schools are subject to greater accountability for student achievement than traditional state-run schools.
Because the U.S. vests so much of its education policy to the states, parents would do well to learn which states are investing in teacher professional development in phonics-based “science of reading” curricula and English language learner skills. (Hint: Those that do not are mostly on the West Coast and in the Northeast).
Finally, there is also a role for the private sector.
Fletcher’s visit honored the school because it was a winner in the annual “Great Reading Tournament” sponsored by a company called 311 Literacy. The tournament engages students on both sides of the border to engage in as many minutes of reading, in English and/or Spanish, as they can during a month-long contest held twice a year.
After an initial reading assessment, students choose age-appropriate, literacy-level appropriate books from a library of more than 9,000 titles. They read on a specially designed platform that records how many minutes they read. There’s no cost to the student, and the winners get prizes — good ones, like tablets and laptops.
Secondary school Lic. Leobino Zavala Camarena won for the most minutes read in both Spanish and English combined. Overall, participating students in the U.S. and Mexico read for more than one million minutes in the November 2024 tournament. The next one starts tomorrow, March 1.
So, start with government investment, incentivized by initiatives like Plan México. Add public-private partnerships where businesses benefiting from tax incentives collaborate to fund educational initiatives, particularly in underdeveloped regions. Advocate for policies that ensure parents have quality choices to send their children to a rigorous school that is a good fit for them. Mix in some private innovations like The Great Reading Tournament − simple, yet effective strategies that motivate students and school communities to get reading — and we might make real headway on solving the literacy crisis.
Mexico has great potential to meet the challenges of the 21st century. In times of crisis, it has shown it can galvanize its people and lead. This moment requires such leadership to step up and prioritize literacy for its citizenry, especially for the next generation. Hopefully, the U.S. will find such leadership as well.
Tressa Pankovits is a lawyer and education policy expert with over a decade of experience in domestic and international education reform, management, and operations. Formerly Co-Director of the Reinventing America’s Schools project at the Progressive Policy Institute, she is a national advocate for autonomous school models that promote educational equity.
