School has not caught up to other more engaging temptations. A question is, should it.
Your implication is that children, famous for their love of texting rather than calling, are reading less than a generation of tv watching phone callers?
Don’t discount the idea that children are simply better at reading digital content and these tests are testing analogue reading skills.
Keep in mind we just invented the machine that takes complex abstract writing and makes it easy to digest (and takes simple thoughts and expands them into rich texts).
Language informs thought, in a very concrete way. If I can't write it, or read it, I can't think it (to some degree). We abandon formal reading and writing educational standards at the risk of handicapping a generation of young people with poor cognitive scaffolding.
I think "reading" is usually shorthand for reading material that is intellectually and/or grammatically/vocabularily challenging. In short, something that can expand your ability to understand and communicate ideas.
I don't think it hurts or kids should stop doing it but I don't think reading text messages from your peers is going to do that.
Not efficiently communicating ideas?
It's challenging to read the original classics in Greek (and for a while, doing so was considered the epitome of linguistic education), but we have all agreed that it's not worth it given the realities of the modern world.
Take agape for example. Understanding the various ways in which that was used to express 'love' is a masterclass in the history of human emotional development, but I can also read Shakespeare (which is at least in English, sort of), or watch Her (which is a beautiful and compelling film) and arguable have a better understanding of how love is expressed in modernity.