130 million Americans read below a sixth-grade level. This is not just a rate, but a population larger than most countries on earth. In the second paper of The Literacy Stack, we trade percentages for real numbers and walk from Texas to the rest of the world, because behind every statistic is a person someone is responsible for reaching. As generative AI reshapes who gets ahead, this is the gap that will decide it.
Category: Literacy
The Coming Obsolescence: Why Prose Literacy Belongs at the Center of Every AI Conversation in Education
The gaps in prose literacy may be the greatest educational threat to humanity in the modern
era. Not despite the emergence of generative AI, but because of it. This paper asks whether
public education is doing enough to address the dimension of the AI revolution that may matter
most: the foundational ability to read, write, and communicate with the precision that generative
AI requires. The cost of inaction will not be measured in test scores. It will be measured in the
lives of students who graduate into a world they were never equipped to navigate.