A Texas high school teacher was emotionally and visibly distraught after his senior students failed to complete a reading and writing exercise.
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Darius Williams, a teacher for Houston Independent School District's Wheatley High School, said that he realized on the second day of school that his students' poor literacy skills would be a major hurdle, which moved him to tears.
"I just finished a three-hour class, and I literally broke down in the middle of class," Williams said in an Instagram video during his lunch break on Tuesday.
High School Teacher Stunned by Students' Poor Literacy Skills
Williams, a New Education System (NES) Career and Technical Education (CTE) staffer, said he gave his class full of seniors two paragraphs to read and asked them to complete another sentence. Once Williams realized that the high school seniors couldn't complete the assessment, he was devastated.
"I basically completed the sentence for them, he said. "These are 17- and 18-year-old kids, and they couldn't fill in four words. Four words!" exclaimed Williams.
"I gave them the scenario, we annotated together. I gave them the answers before we even had the problem. And they couldn't do it. I simply don't know where the problem is," he said in astonishment.
"This is only day two, and I have seniors who simply cannot read and seniors who cannot write. They cannot write," Williams said.
The high school educator added that his students possess the skills to convey messages in conversation, but struggle to translate those skills to written text.
America Faces a Troubling Literacy Issue
Williams' heartbreaking assessment of his students' poor literacy skills is not an isolated incident.
The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) reported that nationwide reading scores have been on a steady decline since the pandemic.
In 2025, average reading scores for high school seniors — released by the Nation's Report Card — fell to their lowest level since 1992.
"Student academic achievement is the cornerstone of national success and security. This makes a lack of academic progress today a direct and urgent threat to our collective future," said Governing Board member Patrick Kelly, who teaches AP U.S. Government and Politics outside Columbia, S.C. "The continued declines in reading scores are particularly troubling. Reading is foundational to all subjects. Failure to read well keeps students from accessing information and building knowledge across content areas."
