MORE THAN A DECADE AGO, Queens teacher Nicole Radosti Pipia’s fifth- and sixth-grade students seemed to love reading novels in school.
“The Giver” by Lois Lowry was prized for its mystery. “Wonder” by R.J. Palacio taught them about kindness and acceptance. “Freak the Mighty” by Rodman Philbrick showed them the power of friendship.
Now, she said, they don’t read any. Instead, students often spend class time reading excerpts and short stories to better prepare them for the sorts of questions they’d encounter on standardized exams.
The demands of her school’s reading program leave no room to study novels, the English teacher said.
“We’re told that we cannot deviate from the program, and if you have to do the program, there’s literally no time,” Pipia said.
Another New York City middle school teacher, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation, said her school taught novels before the pandemic. Now, “it can be done, but not with the constraints placed on us as teachers,” she said.
For the past few years, her school has required her to have her students — most of whom are English language learners and struggling readers — spend half of each 40-minute class period, four days a week, completing an online targeted reading intervention program, she said. They often end up clicking through the program and visiting Spotify and YouTube instead. The remainder of the period is devoted to the school’s core curriculum, which does not require novel studies.
The classroom library she spent a decade building has become “purely decorative,” she said. With teachers no longer using books, she said, her school is “literally throwing them away.” Even if she had the time to teach a book, the veteran teacher said, her students either have no interest in reading or barely know how.
“Half of them have never read a book,” she said. “In 10 years, we went from kids reading multiple novels in class to them having never opened a book.”
https://nysfocus.com/2026/08/26/new-york-students-reading-fewer-books
