By Mia Padovano
As reading habits change, mirroring a national trend of waning interest in literature, local schools are considering whether and how to revise their curricula to tempt distracted students into books.
Despite national reports that high schools are assigning fewer full books and relying more on book excerpts, local educators say their students are still expected to read full novels and non-fiction works.
At Rye Neck High School, students in grades six to 12 read four to six books per school year, in addition to shorter nonfiction pieces, short stories, and poems, said Kara Slattery, the school’s English department chairwoman.
“The number hasn’t really decreased,” she said.
But getting students to read has new challenges.
“Kids just don’t read as much. I see more of a struggle to focus and trouble completing a task from start to finish,” said Slattery, who added that despite cellphone bans, students are still tempted by their devices.
Most kids, though, are hardworking and want to be successful, she said.
“I think that every person I know needs to work to maintain reading stamina when there are so many other forms of media available. Students are no exception,” said George Krajca, who has been teaching English at Rye High School for 27 years.
His observation is backed by a 2023 study from University College London and the University of Florida that said only 16 percent of adults read for pleasure.
Krajca believes the benefits of reading are especially powerful during adolescence.
“I tell my students that they should approach reading the same way they do nutrition and exercise,” he said, adding that consistent practice leads to greater success.
How teachers plan to lead kids to that consistent practice depends to some extent on where a child goes to school.
At Rye Neck High School and Rye Country Day School, students are assigned the same book and at least one other book of their choosing for summer reading. In 2025, all Rye Country Day students read “The Confident Mind” by Nate Zinsser, who then visted the school as a guest speaker. The shared reading creates a bond between students, said Tatum Bell, Upper School English department chairwoman at RCDS.
At Rye High School, English faculty release a recommended reading list. Students are encouraged to read two books they haven’t read before, either from that list or of their own choice.
Students at all three schools are still reading classics like “Catcher in the Rye,” and “The Great Gatsby,” as well as Shakespeare, but new titles are sometimes assigned as well.
At Rye Neck, students may be assigned “Almond,” by Sohn Won-pyung, “Tuesdays with Morrie,” by Mitch Albom, and “The Namesake,” by Jhumpa Lahiri, Slattery said.
Kara Slattery, chairwoman of Rye Neck High School’s English department.
A December 2025 New York Times article reported as few as two full books per year are assigned in high school classrooms nationwide. Instead, students were reading excerpts of both classic and contemporary novels.
“I typically only read full books as I find them more enjoyable to read, but in English class we read a lot of shorter excerpts,” said a rising junior at Rye High School.
Rice Johnson, another rising Rye junior, said sophomores were assigned one chapter of “The Odyssey” instead of the full epic poem, in addition to three or four full books.
“Sophomore year was definitely more outside reading than freshman year,” he said. “Freshman year was barely any.”
Another rising junior said they were assigned excerpts of “Macbeth” and watched a few movie adaptations of the play instead of reading the full text.
All said few of their friends read for pleasure.
Slattery said teachers may assign excerpts in class, instead of full texts, for deep analysis. Rye Neck principal Melinda Folchetti, herself a former English teacher, said she often pulled excerpts from Wordsworth or the Book of Genesis when the full text she assigned alluded to them.
Rye Country Day School transitioned from AP English courses to an honors seminar model as part of a broader curricular initiative. The goal is to provide students with greater choice while maintaining opportunities for college-level literary discussion, criticism, and analysis.
Now, the curriculum includes diverse choices, like NYC literature, Latine lit, and Black magical realism, alongside English classes about sports, food, and satire. “Asian American Literature” and “Identity and Beyond Binaries: An Introduction to Queer Literature” are examples of semester-long classes in the new curriculum.
“When students have agency, they’re more invested and engaged,” Bell said.
As a result, students are choosing more English classes, and performing better in testing. The “mirrors and windows” concept means that literature has a greater impact and is more relevant when students can see themselves and others in the stories.
“Since we’ve moved away from AP tests, some students still take AP tests and have been scoring the same or better,” said Bell.
Both Rye Country Day and Rye Neck are implementing a new student-driven yearlong literary research class.
At Rye Neck, the pilot class was successful. For one project, a student researched film adaptations of Shakespeare and evaluated how the different versions reflect the themes of the original text.
“This is big fun,” said Folchetti, who supervised the student’s project.
Outside of basic graduation requirements, Rye Country Day wants to offer more interdisciplinary courses like playwriting. Rye Neck hopes to expand beyond creative writing, journalism, and cinema electives.
Meanwhile, Rye High will continue to offer English electives like “Children’s Literature” and “Speech and Debate.” The school also offers a class called AP Seminar, an English elective for grades 11 and 12 that focuses on academic research skills, allowing students to dive more broadly into research beyond literary-specific research.
Rye High School will also offer an International Baccalaureate (IB) Language and Literature class this fall, one of 12 new IB classes.
“We are finding a balance between teaching students to read for literary understanding, and learning how to read to deconstruct arguments,” Krajca said. “I think our students do very well in … standardized testing and have demonstrated that they are ready to meet the challenges of college.”
