Education report reveals which states have seen biggest drops in reading, math scores

(NEXSTAR) – While some schools are starting to claw back some of the ground lost due to pandemic-era learning disruptions, there's still a ways to go, a new report finds.

The Nation's Report Card, released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), compares fourth and eighth grade test scores in school districts around the country. The report shows fourth graders have made small gains in math scores over the past two years (though they're still short of 2019 test scores), but eighth graders' math scores haven't budged.

The situation is even more grim with reading scores, which dropped further in 2024 for fourth graders and eighth graders.

"Overall, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance," said NCES Commissioner Peggy G. Carr in a press release. "Where there are signs of recovery, they are mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performing students. Lower-performing students are struggling, especially in reading."

State-by-state results

While some states are taking small steps forward, it appears others are falling behind, the report card found.

With math scores in public schools, most states saw no significant change between 2022 and 2024. One state, Nebraska, saw scores drop for fourth graders. At the eighth-grade level, four states saw test scores drop: Alaska, Idaho, Florida, and Nevada.

Students in more states are struggling with reading, the report found. Fourth graders in Arizona, Florida, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Vermont saw test scores drop from 2022 to 2024.

Eighth-grade reading scores dropped in many of the same states, plus a few more: Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Nevada, Utah and Vermont.

The rest of the states saw "no significant change." Not a single state was found to have significantly boosted reading scores over those two years, though one city – Atlanta – was found to have made some progress.

In some cases, it's hard to tell if students are making progress or if states are just changing their standards. For example, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Florida seem to have relaxed their proficiency cutoff in math and reading in the last two years, Tom Kane, a Harvard economist, told the Associated Press.

The Education Recovery Scorecard analysis, by researchers at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth, shows the average student remains half a grade level behind pre-pandemic achievement in both reading and math.

Within states, the gap between high-performing students and struggling students is also generally widening.

“The pandemic has not only driven test scores down, but that decline masks a pernicious inequality that has grown during the pandemic,” said Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist who worked on the scorecard. “Not only are districts serving more Black and Hispanic students falling further behind, but even within those districts, Black and Hispanic students are falling further behind their white districtmates.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.