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The kids are not all right.
For the first time since the pandemic, the National Assessment of Educational Progress — commonly known as the Nation’s Report Card — released its scores on 8th-grade science and 12th-grade reading and math. Results were down in all areas, with high school seniors seeing the most significant declines.
Specifically, the average math score for 12th grade in 2024 was the lowest it had been since the assessment began in 2005; 45% of them performed below the NAEP basic achievement level. For reading scores, just 35% of 12th-graders were at or above NAEP’s proficiency level, and their average score was 10 points lower than when the reading assessment was first administered in 1992.
“These results are sobering,” Matthew Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said in a statement. “The drop in overall scores coincides with significant declines in achievement among our lowest-performing students, continuing a downward trend that began even before the COVID-19 pandemic.”
According to the assessment guidelines, if a high school senior meets NAEP’s proficient level, they can likely connect key details across texts and use those details to draw conclusions about an author’s tone and purpose. The latest scores indicate that most students do not have those reading skills.
These scores partly demonstrate the impact the pandemic had on student learning; in addition to the math and reading scores, NAEP also found that 31% of 12th-graders reported missing three or more days of school in the previous month in 2024, up from 26% in 2019.
Reading scores were already declining before the pandemic
Business Insider previously reported on the reading literacy crisis , partly spurred by the introduction of technology and the increasing reliance on screens instead of books.
Inconsistent reading instruction also played a role — while some states required teachers to use evidence-based practices for reading curriculum, others were using methods that were not proven to help with reading literacy.
These scores also come as the Trump administration continues to dismantle the Department of Education. The Supreme Court in June allowed the department to move forward with firing half of its staff, and just a handful of employees now remain at the National Center for Education Statistics, which collects data on student achievement.
Linda McMahon, Trump’s education secretary, previously said that the cuts were made to promote efficiency and streamline data collection. The department also canceled a series of state-level NAEP assessments, including math and reading for 12th-graders, through 2032.
Some lawmakers raised the alarm on the latest results. Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the Senate education committee, said in a statement that “we are at risk of having an entire generation of children fail to become productive adults if classroom proficiency does not improve.”
McMahon said the NAEP results confirm the “devastating trend” that kids are testing at historic lows from K-12.
“If America is going to remain globally competitive, students must be able to read proficiently, think critically, and graduate equipped to solve complex problems,” McMahon said. “We owe it to them to do better.”
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