Nation’s Report Card shows further declines in reading, slight improvement in math

Math improvement is scarce, reading scores are down and the takeaway is learning loss has yet to get significantly better in the latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released early Wednesday. 

“Our Nation’s Report Card is out, and the news is not good. We’re not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground students’ loss during the pandemic, and where we are seeing signs of recovery, they’re mostly in math and largely driven by higher performance groups,” National Center for Education Statistics Commissioner Peggy Carr said. 

Reading has taken a significant hit, with both fourth and eighth graders seeing a drop in scores from 2022 to 2024, continuing the declines seen since 2017.  

The NAEP found the percentage of eighth graders who are reading below the group’s baseline is the largest in assessment history. For fourth graders reading below the line, it is the largest percentage in 20 years.  

For reading, the lowest performing students in fourth and eighth grade, at the 10th and 25th percentiles, had scores that were at the lowest since 1992, the first time the NAEP gave a reading assessment. 

The reasons for these reading scores are complex, with some of the proposed problems including students reading for fun less and missing school.

“We also see that lower performers, readers, they’re not coming to school,” Carr said.  

The hope and progress seen from the data have been in math, where fourth graders got a 2-point gain between 2022 and 2024 after dropping 5 points between 2019 and 2022. Eighth graders saw no significant change in their math scores.  

Also, local and some state data has given Carr and other officials hope. 

Carr pointed out Louisiana fourth grade reading and Alabama fourth grade math as doing “what most states were unable” through their improved results. 

“There are encouraging signs of recovery. They can be found below the surface data among some state and urban school districts,” Carr said.  

Between reading and math, concerns grow with the widening gap between highest and lowest performing students.  

In eighth grade math, there was no significant change in math scores due to the big differences in higher performing students seeing increases but lower performing ones declining. For fourth graders, the math scores of lower performing students stayed the same while, higher performing ones increased.  

Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, said due to the data results the board is urging stakeholders to study the trend line NAEP has of how progress was made before when student scores dropped, give urgent attention to the lowest performing students and set a high bar for what students need to know. 

The results are likely to start another debate of who is to blame and put a fire under the Trump administration to see where these scores will go under his tenure.  

“When we fail our children, we fail our nation’s future. Today’s NAEP scores continue the concerning trend of declining performance nationwide. This is clearly a reflection of the education bureaucracy continuing to focus on woke policies rather than helping students learn and grow,” said House Education and the Workforce Committee Chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) 

“I’m thankful we have an administration that is looking to reverse course, and I look forward to helping reform our education system to better serve our youth,” Walberg added.