Amid consistently bad news for US education , one development in public schools is so horrifying, few would believe it’s even true — if the evidence weren’t so solid.  It turns out that book reading in schools has fallen off severely and, in many classrooms, nearly disappeared from the syllabus, even in English classes. More and more, students read short works and excerpts, not entire books.  Some of the most popular curricula used in classrooms include no actual books at all; for example,