According to a study the US is fourth or twelfth in ranking for reading ability of its 4th graders.

Whether it is 4th or 12th depends on whether everyone with the same score (9 countries) is scored as having 4th place or 12th place. If you go to the story connected, it looks like the US in 9th. But in fact there is no statistical significance between the nine countries scoring 4 through 12. Which says scoring it the way they did met some political agenda. Because otherwise they'd have only had 4th or 12th place on those.

I responded to a blogger a few weeks ago who said we were all stupid in the US and didn't read. Obviously he didn't know what he was talking about then and he doesn't know now.