March 2, 2026
New Model Legislation Will Boost Reading in Grades 6 to 12
(Washington DC): The Books Optimize Our Kids’ Schools Act—or BOOKS Act—offers state legislators a simple and straightforward approach to boosting the literary education of students. The model bill from Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) Senior Fellow Stanley Kurtz and First Things Contributing Editor Mark Bauerlein will bring desperately needed education reform to schools around the country.
American students today are no longer reading. Even in English classes, students read short works and excerpts, not entire books. Some of the most popular curricula used in classrooms include no actual books. For example, the 6th Grade texts for Wonders, a McGraw-Hill product found in 20 percent of elementary schools nationwide, average seven pages long. Meanwhile, reading scores continue to fall, college teachers find they can’t assign novels and expect students to read them in their entirety, and leisure reading by Gen Z tallies barely eight minutes a day.
The BOOKS Act directly targets this literacy crisis, requiring public school students in grades 6 through 12 to read at least two books in their entirety each semester in English classes. Furthermore, these books must be of proven merit, and one of the books must have been published before 1900.
“This simple and straightforward statute will push back against the bad effects of social media, help restore our declining literacy, and preserve our precious cultural heritage all at once.” – EPPC Senior Fellow Stanley Kurtz
In the New York Post, Kurtz and Bauerlein introduce the legislation and argue for its adoption.
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Media Inquiries:
Hunter Estes
Director of Communications
Ethics and Public Policy Center
[email protected]
