According to the latest testing data released by the federal government, younger students in the US have regained ground academically after the pandemic’s disruptions, while older students’ test scores continue to stagnate. Nine-year-olds have rebounded to pre-pandemic reading scores and seen some recovery in math, but 13-year-olds’ average scores in math and reading remain below pre-pandemic averages.

Test Results

The test results show that younger kids are improving foundational skills, such as identifying facts in a simple news article or understanding basic multiplication and division. However, teenagers are struggling with more advanced skills, such as making generalizations from a reading passage and comparing information from charts and graphs. Only 58% of 13-year-olds met the benchmark skill level in reading, and 70% in math, with no statistically significant improvement from 2023.

Compounding the issue of stagnant literacy rates is the fact that fewer students than ever are reading for fun. Students who took the test also completed a survey, and only 14% of 13-year-olds said they read for fun every day, down from 27% in 2012 and a peak of 37% in 1992.

Call to Action

Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, emphasized the need for educators to focus more intensely on adolescent learners and turning around academic outcomes in middle school. She noted that the 13-year-olds who took the national test would have been in second or third grade during the first year of the pandemic and would have missed foundational years in building literacy and computational skills in school.

Matthew Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, pointed out that American students’ academic achievement was already declining when the pandemic hit, and that this is not just a pandemic story. He noted that decades of test data show it’s possible to change children’s trajectories over time, and that progress can be made again.

Original reporting: Texarkana Gazette — read the source article.