13-year-olds aren't catching up in reading, math

Math and reading scores aren't bouncing back for 13-year-olds, reports Kevin Mahnken on The 74. Nine-year-olds, whose schooling wasn't disrupted by the pandemic, are doing better, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report on long-term trends. But students heading for high school are not.

"Today’s middle schoolers were second- and third-graders at the beginning of the pandemic, which led to several years of school closures and virtual instruction in many areas of the country," writes Mahnken. "As this micro-generation of children proceeds through their K–12 careers, they bear the scars of that upheaval."

But it's not just Covid. All but the best students have suffered a "learning recession" since 2012, concludes a recent analysis by Dartmouth, Harvard and Stanford scholars.

Nine-year-olds have caught up to pre-pandemic performance in reading, and are improving in math, NAEP reports. Low achievers and boys showed the strongest gains. Among 13-year-olds, even the strongest students haven't caught up to pre-pandemic averages.

Math scores, which started falling in 2012, have reached "jarring" levels, Lesley Muldoon, the executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), said Monday, reports Sarah Schwartz in Education Week

The “science of reading” movement may be helping younger students, she said.

"Over the past five years alone, more than 40 states have passed legislation requiring or encouraging schools to adopt evidence-based practices in reading instruction — often, with a focus on identifying and supporting students who are struggling the most," writes Schwartz.

Schools need to pay more attention to upper elementary and middle-school students' reading, said ExcelinEd's Kymyona Burk, a NAGB member. “In elementary school, we’ll have literacy coaches, tutors, interventionists. … In middle school, those supports drop off, but they’re still needed.”

"Only about half of educators said their schools or districts had dedicated staff to support middle and high school students struggling with foundational reading skills" in a 2025 EdWeek survey, Schwartz writes. "Research has shown that older students who struggle in math and reading often have trouble with basic skills, like manipulating fractions or automatically recalling times tables in math, or reading multisyllabic words in English class."

NAEP's survey of students showed that students are more likely to miss school than in the past. And they're doing less work at home. Thirty-nine percent of nine-year-olds said they'd been assigned no homework the previous night, up from 19 percent in 2012.

They're not spending that time reading: Only 37 percent of nine-year-olds and 14 percent of 13-year-olds said they read for fun "almost every day."