As a teacher I wish it was only poor spelling I had to deal with. Often when I address a class many students look at me as if I am speaking another language. Most struggle to string a sentence together and I have had a number of submitted assignments written in phone text shorthand. The other favourite is of course the cut and paste efforts (web links and all) in which the kids have absolutely no input or understanding.
But one thing that does stand out. When I meet the parents of the students with poor literacy skills it is easy to understand why. Parents are the primary educators of their children and if they also struggle with literacy then this will seriously impact the childs grasp on the english language (wittness the shear scope of slang used throughout England and the UK let alone the colonies). Can this be corrected at school? Still, our language is alive and thus must evolve and change over time. I fear in twenty years we will be the ones with the language problem
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Mark