The Blubber

American students continue to fall behind in reading and have made little progress in math since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the nation’s report card.

The report highlights the ongoing challenges facing U.S. schools, from pandemic-related disruptions and a youth mental health crisis to widespread chronic absenteeism. The data reveals a growing gap in performance: while top-performing students are recovering lost ground, lower-performing students are falling further behind.

Administered every two years to a representative sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students nationwide, the NAEP is one of the most reliable measures of academic progress in the U.S. The most recent test, conducted in early 2024, assessed students’ skills in math and reading.

“The news is not good,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the NAEP. “We are not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground our students lost during the pandemic.”

One small positive finding came from fourth-grade math, where the average score rose by 2 points on a 500-point scale. However, it remains 3 points below the 2019 pre-pandemic average. Some states and districts showed significant progress—Washington, D.C., for example, saw an impressive 10-point increase in average scores.

Despite these isolated improvements, most schools have not made meaningful progress. The average math score for eighth-graders showed no improvement from 2022, while reading scores fell by 2 points for both grade levels. Alarmingly, one-third of eighth-grade students scored below the “basic” level in reading, the highest percentage in the exam’s history.

Students scoring below basic are missing fundamental skills. For instance, eighth-graders in this category struggled to infer a character’s motivation in a short story or failed to recognize that “industrious” means “hard-working.”

The widening gap between high- and low-performing students is especially troubling. While the top 10% of eighth-grade students saw their math scores improve by 3 points, the lowest 10% experienced a 6-point drop, leaving them further behind.

“We are deeply concerned about our low-performing students,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board. “For a decade, these students have been in decline. They need our urgent attention and best effort.”

This latest setback follows a historic decline in 2022, when scores fell across nearly all grade levels and subjects. Carr cautioned that the current poor results can no longer be attributed solely to the pandemic, emphasizing the broader “complex challenges” facing the nation’s education system.

A survey conducted alongside the exam in 2022 found fewer students were reading for pleasure—a trend linked to lower reading scores. The latest survey revealed that chronically absent students are struggling the most, underscoring the urgent need to address absenteeism and other barriers to learning.