There's a clue later on in the article, when it describes reading for fun almost every day is also lower than previous years. The goal of school is not for stu

There's a clue later on in the article, when it describes reading for fun almost every day is also lower than previous years. The goal of school is not for students to learn what The Pearl by Hemingway is about. The goal is for students to learn "to read"— ie, learn what to skim, what to pay attention to, what's being said between lines, how literary devices are used, how to piece different layers of ideas from a stream of words, etc. And importantly, to enjoy it at least to some degree, since it's a healthy habit Teaching the test in this context would be similar to teaching students to write some "top 20" algorithms, and recite their time complexities, knowing at least some of them will be on the test. It's definitely easier than teaching students the parts that make up a programming language, what big-O notation actually means, and the sort of generalized knowledge that will not only allow them to write and analyze _any_ program, but to see the beauty in programming and maybe even inspire a few to program for fun. This view of school as some sort of "training camp" for a test, is a terrible manifestation of focusing on the metric to the detriment of focusing on the goal.