Author Josh Shepperd publishes three theses on his Substack blog reframing the debate over a supposed literacy crisis. He argues that recent coverage, including a widely shared Atlantic article, conflates distinct reading challenges and misinterprets NAEP assessment data. Shepperd notes that literacy involves multiple context‑dependent practices, ranging from basic decoding to digital multimodal interpretation, and that current tests measure only a narrow slice of these abilities. He further contends that the perceived decline stems from reduced public investment in educational infrastructure and the rise of platform‑driven communication rather than from individual inability to read. The author calls for a broader view of literacy as public infrastructure and says his next post will outline a pedagogical framework for teaching English in the post‑digital age.