“The reading skills of American high school seniors are the worst they have been in three decades, according to new federal testing data,” Dana Goldstein writes in “Reading Skills of 12th Graders Hit a New Low.” The results, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, showed that a third of the 12th graders who were tested did not have basic reading skills.

We asked students for their reaction. There was a strong consensus: They were alarmed, but not surprised. Teenagers from across the country told us they see the decline firsthand in their classrooms. They pointed to a combination of factors, including lost learning during the pandemic, the overwhelming workload of modern high school, lowered academic standards and, most of all, the relentless pull of screens that has, in their words, decimated attention spans.

But they didn’t just diagnose the problem; they voiced urgent concerns for the future, warning of a crisis where a generation is left unprepared to understand politics, get a job or read a legal contract. They also made suggestions for how schools, teachers, parents and students themselves could address the problem.

Thank you to all who joined the conversation this week, including students from Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, Ill., and Vanden High School in Fairfield, Calif.

It does not surprise me that a third of 12th graders tested lack basic reading skills. I think the decrease in these reading skills says a lot about how our generation is changing. Many of us have grown up surrounded by screens, and it’s hard to stay focused on long texts when everyone online moves so fast. For me, I’ve noticed that reading a whole book feels harder than it used to — I get distracted or want to check my phone…