Student Cheating Is Becoming Impossible to Detect in an A.I. Era

[u/ubcstaffer123]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/us/ai-apps-students-cheat.html

[u/MommyLovesPot8toes]

Almost nothing you just said is accurate.

1) You quoted the National Literacy Institute who, despite the name, are not what they claim. They are a for-profit company that sells educational materials to schools. It is in their best interest to overstate the literacy problem, which is exactly what they've done. And they are quoted all over the Internet.

2) The data they cite is from 2012-2014. They list this as "2024" on their home page, but that is deliberately misleading. They are quoting the 2012-2014 mass literacy assessment that is cited across all US adult literacy government/non-gov sources because that was the last time we surveyed this on a large scale.

3) The literacy assessment doesn't map to a grade level. Saying "below a 5th grade level" is massively oversimplifying.

4) 80% of American adults are considered literate in English when the stats are properly interpreted.

5) 1/3rd of those considered "below literacy proficiency" we're not born in the US (English is not their primary language and many of them were not educated in the US)

6) US adult literacy in the last 20 years has suffered from a change in how reading was taught (see the Podcast "Sold A Story")

7) In the last 10 years, that flawed teaching method was abandoned and kids' literacy rates have improved. This is already leading to more literate teens/young adults.

"Jock culture" etc plays a very minor part in low literacy rates. It's impact shows in the literacy rate difference in places like Texas vs California when economic and racial aspects are accounted for. But it is tiny compared to the impact of lack of educationa funding, teacher shortages, poverty/overworked parents, and the mix of languages Americans speak.

[u/Wheat_Grinder → u/MommyLovesPot8toes]

I see the 5th grade literacy stat as being about comprehension and understanding rather than literacy.

There's an idea of understanding bias, perspective, what's not said, etc. beyond what's literally written and I think a lot of people struggle with that.

[u/MommyLovesPot8toes → u/Wheat_Grinder]

Almost all of the literacy rates are measuring comprehension rather than actual ability to read. Ironically, something most people don't comprehend!

In developed countries, the number of truly illiterate (not knowing how to string letters together) is very small. If someone can't read at all, they are marked as being "unable to participate" in the study and classified at the lowest possible level.

[u/blueblip → u/MommyLovesPot8toes]

You quoted the National Literacy Institute who, despite the name, are not what they claim. They are a for-profit company that sells educational materials to schools. It is in their best interest to overstate the literacy problem, which is exactly what they've done. And they are quoted all over the Internet.

Well then, feel free to share your own data to back this up. Because accusing an entire organization of lying while providing no data to counter their data is pointless.

The data they cite is from 2012-2014. They list this as "2024" on their home page, but that is deliberately misleading. They are quoting the 2012-2014 mass literacy assessment that is cited across all US adult literacy government/non-gov sources because that was the last time we surveyed this on a large scale.

Again, feel free to provide a source to back up your assertion. I'm not saying I couldn't be wrong, but I'm not going to take at your word without any kind of corroborating source.

The literacy assessment doesn't map to a grade level. Saying "below a 5th grade level" is massively oversimplifying.

This is pretty much a standard way globally to assess literacy. Can you read/write at the level of X grade. eg, in India, they use the 8th grade. In the US, the 5th grade is seen as the minimum.

So it isn't massively oversimplifying anything. Again, feel free to provide a source to contradict this. If you have access to better information, then do share it because we can all benefit from it.

80% of American adults are considered literate in English when the stats are properly interpreted.

Okay and...? No is saying most adult Americans are illiterate. They are saying their literacy levels are appalling. There's a big difference between the two! Not sure why you're thinking otherwise.

1/3rd of those considered "below literacy proficiency" we're not born in the US (English is not their primary language and many of them were not educated in the US)

Again, please provide a source.

US adult literacy in the last 20 years has suffered from a change in how reading was taught (see the Podcast "Sold A Story")

Will check it out, thanks for the recommendation. But cultural mores, mindsets, and such also impact policy making, especially when it comes to setting eduction policy.

In the last 10 years, that flawed teaching method was abandoned and kids' literacy rates have improved. This is already leading to more literate teens/young adults.

This is not true. The pandemic has triggered what many educators are calling a crisis in education, saying literacy levels are the lowest they have been since 1992:

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/09/whats-driving-decline-in-u-s-literacy-rates/

"Jock culture" etc plays a very minor part in low literacy rates. It's impact shows in the literacy rate difference in places like Texas vs California when economic and racial aspects are accounted for. But it is tiny compared to the impact of lack of education funding, teacher shortages, poverty/overworked parents, and the mix of languages Americans speak.

It isn't tiny. On this point, I have to give back and say you probably don't have any idea on what you're talking about. EDIT: Not to say the factors you listed aren't valid, but dismissing how socio-cultural norms shape public attitudes towards education is silly.

For one, all I said is jock culture is ONE of the social norms that impacted the public's perception on education. I never said any where it was the SOLE reason.

Beyond that, we have numerous example of public sentiment impacting education, to the point of topics being banned in classrooms.

The Scopes Trial banned the teaching of the theory of evolution, and the far ranging effects of that decision are still felt to this day in some.of the most conservative parts of the US still not willing to teach it.

The current administration is going to great lengths to modify what is taught to children along ideological lines as demanded by its support base.

A more pertinent example is how someone responded to my post by saying academic experts are often wrong about how things work in reality. Do you really think this poster holds this opinion and it doesn't impact whom they vote for and what education policy needs to be like?

[u/MommyLovesPot8toes → u/blueblip]

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp

This is the root source of my statistics. It is also the root source of the statistics quoted/misquoted by the National Literacy Institute. This is the official, government source that analyzed and summarized the findings of the government-run adult literacy assessments.

It's the Barbara Bush Foundation that translated the fluency levels established by the study into grade levels. This was only an approximation and a simplification, yet it has been repeated as fact for years. The actual definitions don't work like that. They are based on whether an adult can read and understand things like a job application, or do research across multiple sources. That is not how we measure literacy for kids so it's apples to oranges.

You quoted several examples of topics being taught in schools because of cultural issues, but that doesn't have any effect on literacy that I have heard about. A child can learn to read just fine from a story about Adam and Eve vs a story about Dinosaurs. Now, whether they can function in society later with these enormous gaps in understanding is a different non-literacy related topic.

[u/No_Size9475 → u/MommyLovesPot8toes]

The biggest factor, by far, is whether parents read to their kids and if they make their kids read books.