US students falling further behind in reading: Nation's Report Card

America’s public school students are continuing to fall behind in reading and have made little to no improvement in math, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card. This is as youth are experiencing high levels of mental illness and chronic absenteeism.

The assessment is administered every two years and measures national and state student achievement in math and reading in fourth and eighth grades.

Fourth-grade math, despite a slight improvement, is on average still 3 points lower than the 2019 pre-pandemic average. The average math scores for eighth-grade students haven’t changed since 2022, and reading scores dropped 2 points at both grade levels. One-third of eighth-grade students scored lower than “basic” in reading, the worst result in the history of the assessment. Students are rated below basic if they are missing fundamental skills.

Eighth-grade reading scores are now down 8 points since 2019 and down 5 points in both grades. 

Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the assessment, told the Associated Press, “The news is not good. We are not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground our students lost during the pandemic,” adding that the lousy results can no longer be blamed on the pandemic.

The US Department of Education said the “heartbreaking” results reflect a disaster in the education system. This is despite billions of dollars in annual funding.

The department said in a statement, “The Trump Administration is committed to reorienting our education system to fully empower states, to prioritize meaningful learning, and provide universal access to high-quality instruction. Change must happen, and it must happen now.”

Chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) said the decline is “clearly a reflection of the education bureaucracy continuing to focus on woke policies rather than helping students learn.”