Dive Brief:
- Most middle and high school English language arts teachers (90%) assigned at least one full book in the 2024-25 school year, with two-thirds saying they planned to assign between one to four full books to their students, according to nationally representative data released by Rand Corp.
- However, teachers serving historically marginalized students — such as students of color, those experiencing poverty, students with disabilities and multilingual learners — assigned fewer full books, according to the data.
- On average, teachers assigned four full books, and most teachers (60%) assigned more books than required in the curricula. Less than a quarter (24%) said they assigned more than five books, and 9% assigned none.
Dive Insight:
Teachers assigning more full books were more likely to say that their students spent a majority of class time engaging with grade-level texts.
The findings are based on data collected in 2025. That same year, results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress were released and showed reading scores slid further down in 2024, compared to results from 2022 following the pandemic.
Later results from NAEP showed that high schoolers are graduating with fewer reading skills as the gap between higher and lower-performing students widens in most areas.
And in December, a New York Times survey of over 2,000 educators, parents and students found that school curriculum products purchased from major publishers involved answering short-form questions and writing brief essays based on short stories, articles and excerpts from novels — rather than full books.
That model is partly in response to state standardized testing, the news outlet reported.
"By the time teachers get through their required curriculums and prep students for exams, they often have little or no time left to guide classes through a whole book," said the New York Times report.
The Rand report released Wednesday also found that teachers who primarily used publisher-developed curricula assigned fewer books than teachers who did not use such curricula.
Another reason for the shift away from whole books might be lack of student interest, said Natalie Wexler, an education writer focusing on literacy and equity issues, in the American Federation of Teachers' American Educator journal spring 2026 edition.
"Another is lack of time in a world where … many students simply don’t read outside class," Wexler wrote. "That’s been especially true since the pandemic, when many schools lowered expectations because students were dealing with difficult or even traumatic situations. Even though the pandemic is long over, those looser standards are often still in place."
The Rand report made three suggestions to address the lack of whole books in curriculum:
- Curriculum developers could include more full books in ELA curricula.
- Organizations supporting curriculum selection should provide more information about which full books and how many books are in curricula.
- Researchers should investigate how full-book reading can aid literacy instruction and boost student outcomes.
