Utah’s Young Students Falling Behind in Reading?

According to FOX13, almost half of Utah's students from Kindergarten to third grade are not able to read at grade level.

This is surprising. I assumed Utah would be great at reading because of all of the overzealous parents.

According to the article:

"The school districts that struggle with K-3 student reading proficiency include those in northern and southern areas of Utah, including the Salt Lake City School District, which is one of 17 districts that fail to reach 50 percent. Only the Park City School District, at 70.1%, met the goal of more than 70 percent proficiency in 2025." (LINK TO FULL ARTICLE ON FOX13)

It's tough to get these kids to read. They've got all sorts of distractions around now. Phones and Tik Tok and gameboys. If you were a third grader now would you even dream of cracking open The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Heck no. Who could trudge through that in 2026 for heaven's sake?

It's time to lower the reading standards.

Why are we holding these kids to the same standard we held people to before YouTube? People learning to read a few decades ago were bored to tears all the time. They'd go outside, climb a tree, get into a pickle with Benny the Jet Rodriguez, it'd get dark and they'd go home and the only means of entertainment was Home Improvement or reading Encyclopedia Brown. It was 50/50 that a kid would pick up a book.

Now kids have YouTube and are probably smarter. They're getting a lot more information more efficiently. Who cares that they can't read?