>...as a whole, Americans are not getting better at reading
And this fundamental miss-understanding of the point is why misleading titles are such a pernicious problem.
The contention is that no, Americans are actually getting better at reading, but more low achieving students are now being included in the test. This is dragging down the recorded scores, even though students who would have been included previously are getting better scores now (which is the only really meaningful comparison), and also those previously untested demographics are almost certainly also doing better than they were when they were dropping out of the testing regime.
And this fundamental miss-understanding of the point is why misleading titles are such a pernicious problem.
The contention is that no, Americans are actually getting better at reading, but more low achieving students are now being included in the test. This is dragging down the recorded scores, even though students who would have been included previously are getting better scores now (which is the only really meaningful comparison), and also those previously untested demographics are almost certainly also doing better than they were when they were dropping out of the testing regime.