NAEP Test Scores and the Great Awokening: A Troubling Trend for America’s Most Vulnerable Students
Recent NAEP test scores reveal a troubling collapse among America’s most vulnerable students — a narrative that mainstream media has largely overlooked. The so-called “Great Awokening,” which claimed to champion these very children, is now failing them spectacularly.
A recent New York Times article inadvertently confirms the warnings long voiced by conservative education reformers and concerned parents: academic standards in the United States are in free fall, with the most disadvantaged children suffering the greatest consequences.
In an article titled “The Pandemic Is Not the Only Reason U.S. Students Are Losing Ground”, the Times acknowledges that the nation’s lowest-performing students began to struggle long before COVID-19, with a notable decline starting around 2013. This timeline is crucial, as it aligns with both the waning of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind legislation and the emergence of progressive ideologies in public education, a shift some critics have dubbed the “Great Awokening.”
The data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows a concerning trend: from 2003 to 2013, even the lowest 10% of test takers—those most in need of support—were showing gradual improvement. However, beginning in 2013, that progress reversed sharply. Since then, the lowest scorers in both 4th and 8th grade math and reading have seen a steady decline, a trend that significantly worsened after 2020.
As the Times notes, “Today, the country’s lowest-scoring students are in free fall.” In fact, the American Enterprise Institute has described this situation as a “five alarm fire” regarding the state of educational progress in the United States.
Despite the alarming data, some leftist commentators dismiss the findings as mere reflections of racial disparities or cheating on the NAEP tests, suggesting that there’s little to worry about.
The Deepening Crisis: Who Is Really Affected?
It’s important to clarify that this issue extends beyond the top-performing students experiencing slight declines. The bottom quartile—disproportionately composed of students with disabilities, English language learners, and children from low-income families—is where the greatest educational collapse is taking place. While higher-achieving students have stabilized post-pandemic, these vulnerable groups continue to fall behind.
In the current educational landscape, top scorers are merely treading water, while the lowest performers are witnessing their scores plummet dramatically.
Equity vs. Excellence: The Woke Policy Dilemma
While the New York Times scrambles to attribute these issues to factors such as the Great Recession, the rise of smartphone usage, and the lapse of Bush-era accountability standards, it sidesteps the more profound transformation occurring within public education: the shift towards progressive social experimentation.
Since 2013, schools have increasingly prioritized equity over excellence, activism over academic rigor, and “lived experience” over empirical learning. Standardized testing, disciplinary measures, gifted programs, and even traditional math instruction have been criticized as “racist.” In their place, feelings, narratives, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training sessions have taken precedence.
As noted by author Steve Sailer in his commentary on NAEP trends, the decline isn’t coincidental: “White collar kids do okay going to school on Zoom, but blue collar kids benefit from being physically present in schools, interacting with middle-class adults.”
This shift began in earnest around 2013, coinciding with the embrace of identity politics and anti-merit ideologies under the guise of “inclusive education.” The transition from core subjects to ideological indoctrination eroded the structure and authority that vulnerable students rely on to thrive.
Collapse by Design?
Under the No Child Left Behind framework, schools were held accountable for results, with teachers pressured to demonstrate gains in reading and math — a measure that, while contentious, proved effective, particularly for students lacking support at home.
However, as this system deteriorated—first due to Obama-era waivers and later through bipartisan neglect—schools became unmoored from accountability just as the equity movement gained traction. The new focus shifted towards group identity, social justice, and vague “trauma-informed” teaching methodologies. What followed was a measurable decline in performance that has hit hardest those students the Left purports to protect.
The bottom 10% didn’t just lose ground; they were systematically left behind as public education morphed from a platform for equal opportunity into one for ideological compliance.
This decline among low-income students echoes the Cloward-Piven strategy from the 1960s, which advocated for overwhelming public systems to justify radical reform. In today’s educational context, we see a similar approach: as discipline diminishes, academic standards erode, and merit is labeled oppressive—all under the guise of promoting equity. The result? Schools fail the very students they are intended to uplift, advancing a broader agenda of centralization and dependency.
Media Recognition, Yet a Missed Perspective
The Times article does document these troubling trends, yet, like many left-leaning media outlets, it avoids addressing the core issue directly. Instead, it offers generic explanations:
“Researchers point to a number of educational and societal changes over the past decade, including a retrenchment in school accountability, the lasting effects of the Great Recession, and the rise of smartphones…”
However, these factors fail to explain the dramatic drop in performance post-2013, nor do they clarify why high-achieving students have maintained steady scores while only the bottom performers have suffered significant declines.
The explanation lies in a loss of structure, rigor, and a classroom environment increasingly hostile to objective standards, discipline, and academic excellence.
The Legacy of the Great Awokening: Failing the Underprivileged
The real tragedy extends beyond numbers; it is generational. A decade of misguided educational ideologies—imposed by activists, bureaucrats, and DEI consultants—has deprived an entire cohort of students of their chance at success.
While elites send their children to preparatory schools and STEM programs, low-income students are subjected to experimental pedagogies, TikTok therapy sessions, and Critical Theory masquerading as compassion.
The “Great Awokening” was never genuinely about uplifting the poor; it was a strategy to seize cultural power. Now, the consequences of this approach are starkly visible in plummeting test scores, rising dropout rates, and the destruction of future opportunities for the most vulnerable.
This situation further underscores that initiatives like President Trump’s recent efforts to dismantle the Department of Education are not only overdue but desperately needed.
