America’s public schools didn’t suddenly fail Generation Z. They drifted there: slowly, predictably, and then all at once.
By the time the oldest Gen Z students graduated, warning signs were everywhere: falling test scores, soaring absenteeism, teacher shortages, and a mental-health crisis that made learning harder even when students showed up.
School felt less relevant, less trustworthy, and less connected to real life. And nearly half of the students admitted they weren’t even sure why they were there, according to a Gallup survey. The result is a generation entering adulthood with weaker academic skills and deeper skepticism about institutions than the one before it.
Here’s how it happened.
Academic skills slipped, and never fully recovered
Start with the basics. On the OECD’s 2022 PISA exam, U.S. 15-year-olds ranked 26th in math among developed countries, scoring 465—despite living in one of the world’s wealthiest nations. Compared with 2003, U.S. math scores dropped 18 points, and the share of students performing below basic proficiency rose significantly over the past decade.
National data tell the same story. Long-term NAEP scores show that between 2020 and 2022, nine-year-olds lost five points in reading and seven points in math—the largest reading drop since 1990 and the first-ever math decline in this dataset. Lower-performing students were hit hardest, widening long-standing achievement gaps.
By high school graduation, the effects were baked in. Only 21 percent of the class of 2023 met all four ACT college-readiness benchmarks, while 43 percent met none. SAT scores fell again, with just 40 percent of test-takers meeting readiness benchmarks in both math and reading.
In plain terms, nearly half of graduates left high school without test-based evidence that they were ready for college-level work in any core subject.
We Gave Students Phones and Gave Up on Attention
Academic decline wasn’t the only problem. Attention itself became harder to hold.
By 2023, 97 percent of students reported using their phones during the school day. More than three-quarters of teachers said phones were a major distraction. Teenagers now receive a median of 273 notifications a day, many of them arriving while a teacher is trying to explain algebra or history.
When phone use is unrestricted, students spend about nine minutes of a 90-minute class on their devices—almost entirely on social media or messaging. Schools often treated this as a discipline issue rather than a design problem.
But research shows that when teachers intentionally structure phone use—setting clear rules and academic goals—learning time increases and test scores improve, especially for struggling students. The issue wasn’t technology itself. It was the lack of guidance on how to manage it.
Attendance Stopped Meaning What It Used To
As attention drifted, attendance followed.
By 2023, about 26 percent of students were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10 percent of school days. Before the pandemic, that figure was closer to 15 percent. In high-poverty districts, more than one in three students was chronically absent.
Remote learning disrupted routines, but many schools struggled to rebuild them. Students learned, often unintentionally, that it was possible to fall behind without immediate consequences.
“The patterns and routines of going to school were disrupted and to some degree eroded during the pandemic,” the AEI researcher Nat Malkus has observed. “It’s going to stay with students until that culture changes.”
Chronic absenteeism doesn’t just hurt the students who miss school. It slows learning for entire classrooms, forcing teachers to reteach material and stretching already limited resources.
Many students stopped seeing the point of school
One of the clearest signals of trouble is motivation.
A Gallup-Walton survey found that only 48 percent of Gen Z middle and high school students feel motivated to go to school. Just 52 percent say they do something interesting each day.
That matters because engagement predicts outcomes. Gallup research shows that students who experience supportive teachers, challenging work, and real-world projects are far more likely to feel prepared for life after graduation.
Gen Z is often described as disengaged, but the data suggest something else: students want purpose, while schools remain organized around compliance—seat time, test prep, and rigid course requirements that leave little room for applied learning or real-world relevance.
A mental-health crisis made learning harder
All of this unfolded during a youth mental-health emergency.
Nearly 40 percent of high school students now report feeling persistently sad or hopeless, according to the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Rates are even higher among girls and LGBTQ+ youth. Safety concerns also play a role: in 2023, 13 percent of students said they missed school at least once in the past month because they felt unsafe at school or on the way there.
At the same time, Gen Z reports historically low trust in major institutions. Schools are trying to educate students who are more anxious, more skeptical, and less inclined to accept authority at face value.
Schools couldn’t keep enough adults in the room
As students’ needs grew, the system’s capacity shrank.
By 2025, roughly 411,000 teaching positions, about one in eight nationwide, were vacant or filled by educators without full certification. Nearly half of teachers say they feel burned out often or always, and nearly three-quarters say they are assuming extra duties because of staff shortages.
Enrollment in teacher-preparation programs has dropped by more than 30 percent over the past decade.
The shortages are worst in high-poverty districts, where vacancy rates are nearly three times higher than in wealthier areas. That means the students who need stability most are the least likely to get it.
Research consistently shows that strong relationships with teachers are one of the most powerful drivers of student engagement. Those relationships are hard to build in a system defined by turnover.
What “failure” actually looks like
Put together, the picture is hard to ignore.
Gen Z entered a school system that struggled to maintain basic academic skills, failed to adapt to a digital attention economy, couldn’t restore attendance or relevance after the pandemic, and underinvested in the people responsible for teaching.
Public schools didn’t fail because educators stopped caring. They failed because the system moved too slowly to adapt to the world Gen Z was growing up in.
The result is a generation that did what it was told, graduated on time, and entered adulthood less prepared—and more uncertain—than policymakers promised.
America’s schools still talk about “college and career readiness.” For many Gen Z students, that promise never became reality.
Disclaimer – This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information. It is not intended to be professional advice.
Disclosure: This article was developed with the assistance of AI and was subsequently reviewed, revised, and approved by our editorial team.
