The average reading and math scores of American high school seniors fell to their lowest levels in two decades in 2024, according to new national data released last week.
The results, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), found that, on average, reading scores for 12th graders were 10 points lower in 2024 than they were in 1992, when the test was first administered, and that math scores fell to their lowest levels since 2005, when the math assessment began.
The test, administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is part of the US Department of Education, assessed roughly 19,300 12th-graders in math, 24,300 in reading and 23,000 eighth-graders in science between January and March of last year.
The report found that 35% of seniors “performed at or above” the NAEP’s “proficient” level in reading, and 22% were at or above that level in math.
It also stated that 45% of 12th graders scored below the NAEP’s “basic” level in math, marking a five percentage-point increase from 2019. In reading, 32% of students scored below the basic level, which was a two-point increase from 2019.
“These results are sobering,” said NCES acting commissioner Matthew Soldner. “The drop in overall scores coincides with significant declines in achievement among our lowest-performing students, continuing a downward trend that began before the Covid pandemic.
“Among our nation’s high-school seniors, we’re now seeing a larger percentage of students scoring below the NAEP basic achievement level in mathematics and reading than in any previous assessment.”
One lingering effect of the pandemic present in the report was chronic absenteeism. The report found that about a third of 12th-graders reported missing three or more days of school in the month before the test, up from 25% in 2019.
“Students are spending less time learning,” said Thomas Kane, an education economist at Harvard. “And when they are present, instruction is less efficient because teachers are constantly reteaching material.”
Robert Balfanz, a professor at John Hopkins University School of Education, said easy access to information online and the use of online assignments may also be leading some students to treat in-person school attendance as optional.
“In their minds, they tell their parents, ‘Look, all my assignments are online, I can do them even if I’m not at school,’” Balfanz said.
But while the Covid pandemic and school closures had major effects on learning, experts say the academic decline began before 2020.
“The uncomfortable truth is that American students have been significantly losing ground for more than a decade,” Eric Hanushek, an education economist, wrote in an opinion piece last week. “The pandemic didn’t break American education – it was already broken.”
Kane said the decline among lower-achieving students began some time around 2015 and has continued.
“It’s clearly not just the pandemic,” Kane said. “It should be troubling to everyone, and we need to find a solution.”
Experts point to a range of potential factors beyond absenteeism that could be contributing to the decline, including increased screen time and smartphone use, declining student engagement, and the rollback of test-based accountability since the expiration of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2015.
Carol Jago, a longtime English teacher and literacy expert at UCLA, told the Associated Press last week that students today read fewer books and spend less time with longer texts.
“To be a good reader, you have to have the stamina to stay on the page, even when the going gets tough,” Jago said. “You have to build those muscles, and we’re not building those muscles in kids.”
Balfanz added that the constant exposure to short-form and visual media in students’ daily lives may be making academic focus more difficult.
One potential solution, he said, could be to add more dedicated reading time into school days – and restricting smartphones in classrooms.
Kane noted that academic declines are appearing in other countries as well, which suggests a broader global trend that could be linked to increased screen use.
Some US states have already passed laws restricting phone use in schools. Kane believes that there needs to be a national effort to assess the impact and effectiveness of those policies to see whether they work and ought to be implemented in more areas.
The role of smart phones and social media in academic performance came up this week during a Senate hearing on the NAEP results.
Martin West, the vice-chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees policy for the NAEP, told lawmakers that the rise of “smartphones and social media platforms targeting youth” is one area they should investigate.
“We lack direct evidence of a causal link between smartphones and learning, but I’m convinced that this technology is a key driver of youth mental health challenges, a distraction from learning, both inside and outside of schools, and a deterrent to reading,” West said.
Rebecca Winthrop, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, testified that student disengagement was exacerbated by the pandemic and is being amplified by social media. She endorsed actions such as smart phone bans, higher academic expectations, and adopting more engaging teaching styles.
The NAEP results also reignited the debate around the federal government’s role in education, with US education secretary Linda McMahon saying last week that the lesson from the results “is clear”.
“Success isn’t about how much money we spend, but who controls the money and where that money is invested,” she said. “That’s why President Trump and I are committed to returning control of education to the states so they can innovate and meet each school and students’ unique needs.”
Representative Tim Walberg, a Republican who chairs the House education committee, agreed and said that “by returning education to the states, we can empower parents and local communities and ensure every child gains the skills necessary to succeed”.
But Democratic representative Bobby Scott pushed back, writing that the NAEP results “reinforce the urgent need for sustained federal investment in academic recovery and educational equity”.
“Now is not the time to retreat from our responsibility to provide every child, regardless of zip code, with the opportunity to succeed,” he added.
Balfanz believes that “some collective effort at the national level” is needed to support states and districts in implementing proven solutions. He emphasized the need to “set targets and goals and strategies” and help build the capacity at the local level to be able to achieve them.
Kane said that he agrees that states need to take a “more aggressive role in helping to reverse these trends” but that the federal government also needs to prioritize partnering with states “in a concerted, coordinated effort to answer two questions: finding effective ways to lower absenteeism and measuring the impact of the cellphone bans”.
“Something fundamental in US schools is broken,” Kane warned. “And we need to fix it.”
