The biggest problem area teachers see in terms of their students’ skills is in writing.

Independent of any discussion about the role of media, writing is the main subject area in which a majority of teachers rank their students as only “fair” or “poor.” Across schools from all socio-economic levels, writing skills ranked at the bottom of students’ skills, in teachers’ assessments.

More than half (55%) of all teachers rank their students as fair (40%) or poor (15%) at writing.

For all subjects except writing, teachers are more likely to say students have been getting better rather than worse over the years they’ve been teaching; when it came to writing skills, teachers were evenly split as to which direction their students’ skills were heading.