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September 10, 2025Three Headlines From New NAEP Reading Scores
Ed. Note: This is a brief, published today by our friends at 50CAN, titled “Special Edition NAEP: Lowest Reading Scores Ever.” The social media commentary below is from CEO Mark Porter McGee, who notes elsewhere these dismal drops in proficiency — “a stark decline in performance” according to Matthew Soldner, the acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics—“happened during a period of unprecedented [$190 billion] federal funding of education.” Also, one way to reverse these trends is to copy states like Louisiana and Tennessee and “focus on high-dosage tutoring, high-quality curriculum and clear information for parents on where their kids stand.”
For local context, we are now a week into the new school year and New Jersey has yet to release statewide data on last March’s standardized testing. If last year is any guide, we’ll see them in December when they are of little value to families. Also, the last time NAEP’s literacy assessment was administered to 12th graders (2013; 4th and 8th graders are supposed to be tested every two years), 41% of NJ high seniors tested at or above proficiency in reading and 59% were below. (We haven’t yet seen this new data broken down by state.
The latest Nation’s Report Card is out. America is getting another educational wake up call and the big question is: will our leaders keep hitting snooze?
In this special edition of the roundup we have brought together all the facts, reactions and context you need to get up to speed.
If you want to dig into all the data yourself, here are the links: 12th grade reading, 12th grade math, and 8th grade science. (If the website is crashing or loading really slow, that unfortunately is pretty normal on the release day.)
Here are the headlines:
1) The worst 12th grade reading scores in the history of the test
The headline you will see today is “High school seniors had the worst reading scores since 1992” and while technically true it is worth remembering the test only goes back to 1992. So they are the worst reading scores in the history of the test. It is that bad.
And the declines were the sharpest among the students furthest behind.
2) Charter school students avoid the drop
It would be easy to say these declines are happening everywhere but that’s not what the results show. While public schools saw significant declines, these same declines are not seen among charter schools.
3) The declines are concentrated among girls
As we have seen in other test results since the pandemic, girls were hit particularly hard by these declines.
News Coverage of the NAEP Scores
New York Times: “The reading skills of American high school seniors are the worst they have been in three decades, according to new federal testing data … The results, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, long regarded as the nation’s most reliable, gold-standard exam, showed that about a third of the 12th-graders who were tested last year did not have basic reading skills.”
AP: “Eighth-grade students also lost significant ground in science skills, according to the results from the National Assessment of Education Progress. The assessments were the first since the pandemic for eighth graders in science and 12th graders in reading and math.”
The 74: “In one particularly grim indicator, a larger percentage of the Class of 2024 scored in the tests’ “below basic” level in both math and reading than in any previous assessment dating back decades.”
Chalkbeat: “More than half of these students reported being accepted into a four-year college, but the test results indicate that many of them are not academically prepared for college, officials said.”
WSJ: “Students who were already struggling tended to fall further behind, creating an even wider gap between the top and bottom. Girls’ scores, on average, dropped faster than boys’. Both trends have shown up on other assessments.”
CS Monitor: “A new batch of student test scores indicate a slump in college and career readiness, as well as a decline in science knowledge. Both of those could have profound implications for the country’s economic future.”
Social Media Reactions
Debra Tisler: “This is a collapse not only of numbers, but of lives and opportunity.”
Paul Runko:“These scores are heartbreaking because behind every number is a child struggling to learn. Parents deserve answers and action to ensure schools get back to the basics of reading, writing, math, and science.”
Brian Jodice:“America’s students are falling further-and-further behind. What happened to all of the funds for learning loss that the teachers unions fought so hard for? When do those kick in?”
Cristina Gulacy-Worrel: “Worst reading scores, EVER, guys.”
Jason Bedrick: “The new NAEP results reveal a national travesty. But we shouldn’t put all the blame on COVID, as the pre-COVID trend was already negative. The failure of schools to provide well-ordered learning environments with a content-rich curriculum is the primary culprit, and the rise of smartphones (and failure to address them) also played a key role, among other factors.”
Diego Lopez: “I remember when teachers actually had to sit down and READ actually READ with their students. Too many put their kids in front of a smart board these days and let that do the ‘teaching.’ Whatever we’ve been doing hasn’t been working across the board.”
Lindsey Burke:“The new 2024 NAEP results released this morning are devastating. In all subjects, scores for the lowest-performing students declined and are as low as they’ve ever been.”
Beanie Geoghegan: “What will it take for Americans to wake up?”
