Johnny Can't Read But his Grades are Higher

Are the schools a mess, or what:

Today’s high school students are taking seemingly tougher courses and earning better grades, but their reading skills are not improving, according to the results of a national assessment released here today that cited grade inflation as a possible explanation.

Obviously school standards have declined are in fact masking the growing problem functional illiteracy among our young:

Darvin M. Winick, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the exams, said in a prepared statement that the findings “provide little comfort,” and “suggest that we need to know much more about the level of rigor associated with the courses that high school students are taking,”

The results found that the reading skills of 12th graders tested in 2005 were significantly worse than those of students in 1992, the first time a comparable test was given, and essentially flat since students took the exam in 2002.