Reading, math scores are out: 'The news is not good'

U.S. fourth-graders are doing worse than ever in reading on the "nation's report card." Lower achievers have hit new lows, continuing a decline that started before the pandemic, reports Sarah Schwartz in Education Week. Reading scores also fell for eighth-graders on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

"The drop from the historic low scores of 2022 comes despite an unprecedented infusion of federal funding that flowed into schools, fueling tutoring and other interventions aimed at addressing learning loss," she writes.

Math scores stayed at the low 2022 level for eighth-graders and rose slightly for fourth-graders, but remain below pre-pandemic levels.

High achievers improved slightly, while low achievers did much worse, widening achievement gaps. Hispanic students lost the most, probably because English Learners did poorly in remote learning.

“The news is not good,” Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers NAEP, said in a call with reporters on Tuesday.

There were only a few bright spots. Louisiana, which has focused on improving instruction, saw fourth-grade reading scores exceed pre-pandemic averages, and Alabama did better than pre-pandemic averages in fourth-grade math.

One-third of eighth-graders tested "below the Basic threshold" in reading, the most in the history of the exam," notes Kevin Mahnken on The 74.

Below-Basic students "likely can’t tell us the main idea of a text,” said Julia Rafal-Baer, a member of NAEP's governing board. “They can’t draw any explicit features from that text." They are at high risk to fail in high school.

Forty percent of fourth-graders tested as below Basic in reading.

Are you smarter than a fourth-grader? Go here to take a pop quiz in various subjects at the fourth- or eighth-grade level.