‘Declines since the pandemic suggest we’re facing complex challenges that cannot be fully explained by the impact of COVID-19,’ one official said.
American students are performing poorly in reading and math skills, failing to regain lost ground during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests administered to fourth graders and eighth graders.
“The most notable challenges evident in the 2024 data are in reading comprehension. Reading scores dropped in both fourth and eighth grades since 2022, continuing declines first reported in 2019, before the pandemic,” said a Jan. 29 statement from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which administers the tests.
As for math scores, fourth grade students registered a two-point gain from 2022. However, this fails to plug the five-point decline in math scores from 2019 to 2022. Eighth grade scores “showed no significant change.”
NAEP, also known as The Nation’s Report Card, measures student achievement, depicting the “state of our K-12 education system and what our children are learning.”
“Overall, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance,” NCES Commissioner Peggy G. Carr said in the statement. “Where there are signs of recovery, they are mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performing students. Lower-performing students are struggling, especially in reading.”
The NAEP has three achievement levels, the lowest being NAEP Basic. In the 2024 test, a larger percentage of students were found to have scored below the NAEP Basic level in reading skills.
Among fourth graders, 40 percent scored below NAEP Basic in 2024, as did 33 percent of eighth graders. Both grades performed worse than in 2022.
“NAEP has reported declines in reading achievement consistently since 2019, and the continued declines since the pandemic suggest we’re facing complex challenges that cannot be fully explained by the impact of COVID-19,” said NCES Associate Commissioner Daniel McGrath.
Fourth grade reading scores dropped from 2022 for Asian and white students.
Among eighth grade students, reading scores fell by five points for Hispanics and one point for whites.
In math, fourth grade and eighth grade scores remained lower than in 2019. In terms of race, average math scores improved for black, Hispanic, and white students in fourth grade.
