STANFORD, CA—Finding that the students’ skills were on track by the standards of the large, carrion-feeding bird, a study published Wednesday in the International Journal Of Educational Research concluded that the average American third-grader reads at the same level as a crow. “In tests of word recognition and reading comprehension, most 8- and 9-year-old pupils in the United States measured up quite well against crows of a similar age,” said the study’s lead author, Stanford University professor Edward Tercero, who stressed that it was only students of median proficiency who merited comparison to the clever corvid, and that many third-graders in underperforming schools read no better than a duck or a Canada goose. “Unfortunately, American students still lag behind crows in many key areas, including abstract thinking, observational learning, problem solving, and emotional intelligence.” The study also found, however, that as a result of the extensive experience they had accumulated by the age of 8, most American third-graders had a slight edge over crows when it came to their ability to avoid predators.