A high school teacher said she’s noticed an alarming trend regarding the comprehension skills of her students. In a TikTok video, an educator named Mackenzie explained that she teaches tenth-grade English at a public high school, and when it comes to proper education and writing techniques, her students are incredibly behind. They are nowhere near the level they should be.

In fact, she claimed the students struggle so much with reading and writing that texting has become a challenge.

A teacher said that her students are ‘illiterate’ and struggle to send texts to each other.

“For some reason, there’s still an argument that even though kids are a couple of grade levels behind, it doesn’t really matter. They can still graduate,” Mackenzie began in her TikTok video. “It’s no big deal. Who cares? As long as they can read random stuff, they’re fine. No. I want you to hear a serious conversation my co-worker and I had the other day.”

Mackenzie recalled that a few years ago, teachers and other public school educators were worried that texting was causing problems for students with their grammar and writing. Young people were using shorthand phrases to say the simplest words and there was a concern that it would translate to the way they were writing and even reading when it came time to complete their schoolwork.

However, now it seems that may be the least of these teacher’s worries, at least for Mackenzie. She claimed that illiteracy has gotten so bad with her students that it’s affecting the way they text each other, meaning they are struggling to send simple words and sentences back and forth.

“They voice note. They voice to text. These kids can’t Google anymore because they’re speaking into the computers,” Mackenzie continued. “They’re speaking into ChatGPT to find their answers and copy and pasting. They are illiterate. How do you expect them to go into the world?”

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Students are starting to rely heavily on AI tools, like ChatGPT, to get their schoolwork done.

Of the more than 200 million writing assignments reviewed by Turnitin’s AI detection tool during 2023-2024, some AI use was detected in about 1 out of 10 assignments, while only 3 out of every 100 assignments were generated mostly by AI. Survey findings from Stanford University saw researchers poll students in 40 different high schools and found that the percentage of students who admitted to cheating has remained flat since the emergence of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools.

Turnitin’s latest data release shows that in 11% of assignments run through its AI detection tool, at least 20% of each assignment had evidence of AI use in the writing. In 3% of the assignments, each assignment was made up of 80% or more of AI writing.

For teachers specifically, according to a Pew Research Center surveya quarter of public K-12 teachers say using AI tools in K-12 education does more harm than good. About a third (32%) say there is about an equal mix of benefit and harm, while only 6% say it does more good than harm. Another 35% say they aren’t sure.

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The literacy crisis is evident in public schools across the country.

The emergence and popular usage of AI tools do nothing to help the already concerning number of illiterate students in schools. This overwhelming reality seems to be affecting many students, especially students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities.

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The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP)“the nation’s report card,” showed that not even half (43%) of fourth graders in the U.S. scored at or above a proficient level in reading. And for marginalized students, the numbers are worse: just 17% of Black students, 21% of Latino students, 11% of students with disabilities, and 10% of multilingual learners can read proficiently by fourth grade.

However, experts say the concern is overblown. In fact, it seems that the main factor contributing to the plummeting reading performance has been the sheer lack of reading. In 1984, 35% of 13-year-olds reported reading for fun “almost every day,” according to NAEP. By 2023, that figure was down to 14%, and 31% of respondents said they never read for fun at all.

The solution for at least half of the problem is encouraging kids to pick up a book. It doesn’t have to be a dense, educational book, but as long as they’re reading something, they’re fueling their minds and engaging in something that can help them out in the long run.

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Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.