After Years of Decline, Younger Students Show Gains in Reading and Math
“It’s very encouraging,” he said. “Although they play below average, [they] they are trending up.”
One of the possible reasons for improvement, the report points out, is the age of the students. They were 4 years old when the pandemic started in 2020 and didn’t start school until many places had returned to full, in-person education. That means they didn’t miss out on important literacy and math lessons in the early years of primary school.
These students gave researchers hope about the nation’s ability to rebuild some of the slides that began long before COVID-19.
2. But 13-year-olds are sad.
The report paints a less optimistic picture of 13-year-olds. Compared to the last assessment, students did not show significant improvement in reading or math.
Reading scores remain below where they were at the start of the pandemic on average, and that includes Hispanic students, white students, female students, economically disadvantaged students and urban students.
Reading scores from this test, on average, are not significantly different from performance on the test that was first administered in 1971.
“The lack of progress among 13-year-olds raises serious questions and should be a catalyst for change,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, during a press conference. His organization sets policy related to NAEP.
For these 13-year-old students, unlike their 9-year-old counterparts, the epidemic was at the center of most of their elementary school experiences. In 2020, they were in second or third grade. Those critical years of literacy and math skills were interrupted by school closures, and this poor performance may be one result.
3. Fewer students are studying for fun – than ever before.
At the same time, the report found that reading is a hobby for a declining number of children.
In 1984, 35 percent of 13-year-old students reported that they read for fun every day. In 2022 and 2025, only 14% said the same. The largest share of 9-year-olds – 37% – indicated that they read for fun every day, but that’s down significantly from decades before.
4. Mathematical continuity is abolished for 13-year-olds.
From 1978 to 2012, the average math score on LTT for 13-year-olds improved by 21 points. Rising scores have been a bright spot in more than 50 years of data. The report shows that most of those gains have been wiped out.
High-achieving students now show no gain at all compared to 1978 math test scores.
“As a nation, we have to focus more on the middle school years,” Muldoon told reporters. “It’s going to take a lot of collective work, but we’ve seen progress, and we’re likely to see it again.”
5. This is the last we will see of a long term trend report for a while.
This is the first long-term NAEP report released since the Trump administration began making cuts to the US Department of Education in 2025. Those cuts included the layoff of more than half the staff at the Institute of Education Sciences, the arm of the department charged with measuring student achievement and overseeing and processing data from tests students take.
After those cuts, the department also canceled about a dozen national and provincial tests of student progress until 2032 — one of which was the next iteration of the tests. (Since then, plans have been announced to restore some of those tests.)
However, students will not see these questions again until 2033.
