We recently wrote about America's "Reading Recession" and the early signs that a recovery might be coming. Well, data released just two weeks ago by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) confirms that 9-year-old readers are slowly making progress. Sounds great! But 13-year-olds? They’re still stuck reading at the same level as their peers from 50 years ago. Is there anything that parents can do to help change the trajectory of America’s young readers?

In a sharp response published in Education Week, senior NAEP policy board member Kymyona Burk pointed to one finding that stopped us in our tracks: only 1 in 5 teenagers talks to someone at home most days about what they're learning in school. Burk implores educators to get parents more involved, claiming that “deeper family engagement and more robust communication” is necessary for students to truly thrive.

Research shows that parents almost universally want to support their children's learning, but there's a persistent gap between good intentions and follow-through. Anxiety can get in the way of communicating about schoolwork. Should they proactively step in, or not? Many parents simply aren’t confident in what their role should look like. When it comes to reading in particular, it's easy to assume that once kids can read on their own, the parental job is done. It isn't.

Doug Evans, CEO of the Institute of Reading Development, learned this firsthand as a dad, not as an educator. "For my son, I was NOT a reading teacher. I was Dad. My role wasn't teaching him every skill myself — it was to check in, to encourage, to advocate, to give him structure and many opportunities to read more." After 56 years of working with more than three million students and their families, the Institute deeply understands the important role parents play in reading development. And it looks different than most parents expect.

TL;DR: Parental engagement is one of the most underused levers we have to help move student reading scores back up. This doesn’t mean parents have to become reading educators themselves. They just need guidance on the best way to get involved with their kids’ reading at every age.

In today’s issue:

• The simple but powerful thing parents should do at bedtime

• The surprising way your reading habits shape your child's

• The conversation most parents of teens aren't having

The Safe Harbor

Most parents of early readers focus on the same thing: phonics. Is my child sounding out words correctly? Are they keeping up with their classmates? It makes sense. Phonics is foundational, and the renewed national emphasis on it is long overdue. However, this over-emphasis can create new blind spots. When researchers investigated why caregivers stop reading to young children, they discovered a pattern: once kids can decode on their own, many parents step back from shared reading entirely, believing their job is done. But the truth is that there’s so much more to reading than sounding out the words on the page.

A new peer-reviewed study found that just 14 nights of shared bedtime reading improved empathy and creativity in children ages 6 to 8. And it didn't matter whether parents stopped to ask questions along the way. There was no skill-building agenda. Just a parent and a child, reading together. That was enough to deepen both comprehension and connection.

This is what the Institute means when it describes the parent’s role in early years as being a '“safe harbor.” Your job isn't to teach phonics at home or quiz your child on what they've just read. It's to make language and stories feel warm, safe, and abundant. To show them, consistently and without pressure, that books are a source of joy and togetherness, not just something to master. Children who grow up with that experience are far more likely to become motivated, independent readers. The safe harbor you create now is a place kids will want to return to.

The Coach & Mirror

By late elementary school, most kids are reading silently, on their own. So when kids start to shut down because schoolwork is getting harder, it’s difficult for parents to even notice. And the true skill gap between kids who are excelling and kids who are struggling isn’t always clear from report cards. If parents happen to identify an emerging reading problem, then a 2025 meta-analysis of family literacy interventions found that they have the power to help turn things around. Unfortunately, most parents don’t know how.

The Institute describes the appropriate parent role at this stage as being your child’s “coach and mirror.” As the coach, your job isn't to reteach what happened in their ELA class. It's to help your child navigate productive struggle without giving up. You observe and discuss, then decide when to step in and when to wait as they get through their homework. As the mirror, your job is to reflect their progress back to them, because all they can see are the words they stumbled over and how long it took. They need you to be the one who says: "This book used to be too hard. Look at you now. You’re halfway through!"

This kind of encouragement matters more than most parents expect. Scholastic's Kids and Family Reading Report found that children who believe that their parents value reading are far more likely to become frequent readers themselves. Not because of tutoring or drilling, but because of the everyday signals parents send about whether reading is worth the effort. Your child doesn't need you to ‘teach’ them at this stage. They need to know you're there to support them if they stumble, that you’re watching and notice progress, and that you're genuinely interested.

The Curator & Conversation Partner

Raising a teen reader is a paradox. This is when your child needs your involvement the most, but you feel least entitled to offer it. Teens naturally pull away developmentally, and the last thing most of them want is a parent peering over their shoulder at their homework. It’s no wonder new survey data from the NAEP shows that only 1 in 5 teenagers talks about what they're learning in school with their family. But that silence has consequences. 13-year-olds are currently reading at the same level as their peers from 50 years ago, and the gap isn't closing.

The good news is that the parent role at this stage doesn't require homework supervision or reading quizzes. It’s actually more fun than that — for you. You get to be a curator and a conversation partner. As the curator, your job is to connect your teen with books that are relevant to their world right now, the things they're figuring out, the questions they're carrying around. "I read this when I was your age and it totally changed my perspective. Want to try it?" As the conversation partner, your job is even simpler: ask what they're reading and get to the bottom of what they think about it. Treat the exchange as a meaningful conversation between two people with ideas worth hearing.

That shift in dynamic turns out to matter enormously. Over in the UK, the National Literacy Trust's 2026 Annual Report found that reading enjoyment drops sharply in early adolescence, and that daily reading among young people hit a 20-year low in 2025. The window to reverse that trend doesn't stay open indefinitely. A parent who stays curious about what their teen is reading, and who shares what they're reading in return, isn't just encouraging a habit. They're keeping a door open that could otherwise close.