WASHINGTON (AP) — Younger students have made significant academic progress following the disruptions caused by the pandemic, while older students’ test scores continue to stagnate, as indicated by the latest testing data released on Wednesday by the federal government.
Data from a long-established test in the U.S. shows nine-year-olds have returned to their pre-pandemic reading levels and have shown some improvement in math. However, 13-year-olds have not experienced the same recovery, with their average scores in math and reading still falling short of pre-pandemic averages. Notably, the reading scores for teenagers who took the test in 2024 are comparable to levels recorded in 1971.
Post-pandemic, educational institutions and state policymakers have concentrated efforts on revamping elementary education, particularly through the “science of reading” approach, which emphasizes phonics. However, the recent test results suggest a need to place greater emphasis on adolescent education, particularly in middle schools, according to Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board.
The 13-year-olds who participated in the national test were affected by the pandemic during their crucial early years in elementary school. In a few years, they will graduate, yet they might still lag behind.
“The 13-year-olds who took this assessment last year are headed to high school now or are already enrolled,” she said. “Schools won’t have them much longer. We can’t hesitate or wait if we’re going to turn these trends around.”
What the test measures
Conducted every four years, the long-term trends assessment provides a snapshot of the academic skills of American students aged 9 and 13. Approximately 31,000 students from public and private schools participated in the test during the 2024-2025 school year. Unlike the main Nation’s Report Card test for fourth and eighth graders, which is regularly updated to reflect new curricula, the long-term test has largely remained unchanged since the 1970s.
According to Matthew Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the decline in American students’ academic achievement began before the pandemic, with test scores peaking around 2012 and then declining.
“We can clearly see that this isn’t just a pandemic story,” Soldner said.
The results indicate that younger children are advancing in foundational skills, such as recognizing facts in a basic news article or mastering basic multiplication and division. In reading, 71% of nine-year-olds achieved the benchmark, while 84% did so in math, marking a slight increase from 2022.
Teenagers, on the other hand, are evaluated on more complex skills, such as drawing generalizations from a reading passage and analyzing information from charts and graphs. Only 58% met the benchmark in reading, and 70% in math, showing no significant improvement from 2023.
Fewer students are reading for fun
A contributing factor to stagnant literacy rates is a decline in students reading for pleasure.
In a survey accompanying the test, only 14% of 13-year-olds reported reading for fun daily, a decline from 27% in 2012 and a peak of 37% in 1992. Among nine-year-olds, the percentage dropped to 37% from 53% in 2012. Researchers attribute the decline in time spent reading to the increased use of social media on cellphones.
Despite these challenges, younger children have shown an “incredibly encouraging” academic recovery in recent years, according to Soldner. However, he noted that “almost 50 years of progress has been eliminated” for 13-year-olds.
The 13-year-olds who took the latest test were in second or third grade during the pandemic’s onset. They resumed in-person learning in fourth or fifth grade and took the national test in their final years of middle school.
Conversely, the nine-year-olds began kindergarten or first grade as schools reopened, with their second and third grade years reflecting more traditional in-person instruction.
These experiences differ significantly, Soldner said, as the older group missed crucial years for developing literacy and computational skills in school.
While the recent decline in student performance is concerning, decades of test data suggest it is possible to improve children’s educational paths over time, according to Mark Miller, an eighth-grade math teacher and former member of the National Assessment Governing Board.
“We have made progress in the past, from the early ’70s to 2012,” Miller said. “Can it be done again? Absolutely.”
