If I were to guess, I would guess spelling was removed from the curriculum several years ago. I work with girls who are just out of high school or in the first year or so of college. To read the papers they prepare for their classes is an adventure. If I had turned in a paper of that caliber in high school I would have been given a failing grade! The spelling mistakes alone were enough to fail; forget the grammatical errors!
I don't go ballistic over punctuation because I'm not good at it, but I believe my posts are understandable, even with my mistakes.