In American high schools, the age of the book may be fading.

Many teenagers are assigned few full books to read from beginning to end — often just one or two per year, according to researchers and thousands of responses to an informal reader survey by The New York Times.

Twelfth-grade reading scores are at historic lows, and college professors, even at elite schools, are increasingly reporting difficulties in getting students to engage with lengthy or complex texts.

Perhaps that is to be expected in the era of TikTok and artificial intelligence. Some education experts believe that in the near future, even the most sophisticated stories and knowledge will be imparted mainly through audio and video, the forms that are dominating in the era of mobile, streaming media.

We wanted to find out how students and teachers feel about the shift, and what role schools can play. So the Times asked educators, parents, and students to tell us about their experiences with high school reading.

More than 2,000 people responded.

Many were longtime teachers who reported assigning fewer whole books now than they did earlier in their careers. Some complained about the effect of technology on students’ stamina for reading and interest in books. But more pointed toward the curriculum products their schools had purchased from major publishers.

Those programs often revolve around students reading short stories, articles, and excerpts from novels, then answering short-form questions and writing brief essays.

Students typically access the content online, often using school-issued laptops.

These practices begin in elementary school, and by high school, book-reading can seem like a daunting hurdle.

Popular curriculum programs that focus on excerpts were created by publishing companies, in part, to help prepare students for state standardized tests. Many schools and teachers are under significant pressure to raise students’ scores on these end-of-year exams, which feed into state and federal accountability systems. Test results are also prominently featured on school-ranking and real estate websites.

By the time teachers get through their required curricula and prep students for exams, they often have little or no time left to guide classes through a whole book.

Andrew Polk, 26, teaches 10th-grade English in suburban Ohio, not far from where he grew up. As a high school student less than a decade ago, he was assigned many whole books and plays to read, among them, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,’’ “The Crucible,’’ and “Their Eyes Were Watching God.’’

But as a teacher, Polk must use StudySync, which centers on excerpts. Many colleagues do not believe students will read whole books, he said, though he noted his own experience had not borne that out.

He still assigns several longer works each year, and has taught “Macbeth,’’ “Fahrenheit 451,’’ and the more contemporary “Paper Towns,’’ by John Green. Teenagers still feel “passion for a good story,’’ he said. “Students absolutely can and do rise to the occasion. It’s just a matter of setting those expectations.’’

When whole books are assigned, they are most often from a relatively stagnant list of classics, according to research from scholars Jonna Perrillo and Andrew Newman.

What may have changed most is the number of these classics students have read. During the 2008-09 school year, one survey found high school English teachers assigned an average of four books annually, with a significant minority assigning seven or more books.

A 2024 survey of English teachers by Perrillo and Newman found they assigned an average of 2.7 whole books per year. The results will be published in 2026.

Some educators explained the decline by pointing toward the Common Core, a set of national standards for English and math that most states adopted in the early 2010s, and that continues to heavily shape classroom practice.

The core was intended to better prepare students for college and introduced more nonfiction reading and thesis-driven writing into schools. It also suggested a more culturally diverse array of authors, and pointed educators toward a long list of titles characterized by “historical and literary significance.’’

Many school districts responded by requiring teachers to closely adhere to curriculum products that took an anthology approach — exposing students to dozens of writers and many genres, but through shorter readings. StudySync, for example, includes a single chapter of Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club,’’ 1,179 words of “Born a Crime’’ by Trevor Noah, and James Madison’s “Federalist Papers: No. 10.’’

Sandra Lightman, an education consultant who helped to develop the Common Core, agreed that students should be reading whole books but argued it was wrong to blame the standards, which she said had been misinterpreted.

Advocates for the core had pointed out that some novels commonly assigned to teenagers, such as “The Grapes of Wrath,’’ were not challenging in terms of vocabulary and sentence structure. They were akin to a second- or third-grade reading level, despite being thematically rich.

“We never intended that should be banned, only that it shouldn’t be the sole source of reading,’’ Lightman said.

She argued that overall, curriculum products include higher-quality, more interesting reading material today than they did 20 years ago, before the Common Core.

There are other reasons some schools prefer excerpts. It can be more expensive to purchase books than to assign a variety of shorter works, which are not subject to copyright restrictions and can be easily read on a laptop or tablet.

In addition, with more than 20 states passing laws over the past five years that limit teaching about race, gender, and sexuality, using excerpts allows schools to avoid passages dealing with banned themes.

Timothy Shanahan, a leading literacy scholar and an author of the StudySync curriculum, said there was no data suggesting that students become stronger readers when they are assigned full novels. The current dominant approach — reading one or two full books per year as a class, alongside many excerpts — “makes great sense,’’ he said, as a way to introduce students to a wide array of writing.

Still, some young adults are frustrated by the lack of book reading in their schools.

Ella Harrigan, 22, of San Francisco, said she read only one book her freshman year, “The Hate U Give.’’ “I opted out and did an online course instead, where I read a book about every two weeks,’’ she said.

Parents who responded to the questionnaire complained, too, even when their children were enrolled in advanced classes at some of the most highly regarded public schools in America, including specialized high schools in New York City and affluent suburban schools in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Both districts said they encourage a mix of whole books and excerpts, but give high school principals and teachers significant latitude in how often to assign longer works.

Kasey Gray, a spokesperson for Imagine Learning, the company that develops StudySync, noted that the curriculum offers some units based on full-length novels.

But Gray acknowledged schools using the program may not incorporate whole books.

“We understand the real constraints educators face — limited time, assessment pressures, and diverse student needs,’’ she said in a statement.

Still, there are many schools, educators, and publishers defying the trend away from whole books — even if they have to bend the rules to do so.