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Nation’s Report Card: Latest results are showing troubling gaps

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Higher-achieving students have rebounded in math and reading but their lower-performing classmates have yet to recover from the academic disruptions of the COVID pandemic, the latest Nation’s Report Card shows.

Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores fell over the last two years, continuing declines recorded just before the pandemic in 2019, according to , also known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Fourth-grade math scores improved two points between 2022 and 2024 after a five-point drop over the three years prior. Eighth-grade math scores were flat.


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“Overall, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance,†said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which produces the Nation’s Report Card. “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.â€

Nation’s Report Card 2024

The percentage of eighth graders not reaching basic proficiency in reading was the highest in the history of the report card. Fourth graders showed the lowest proficiency in 20 years.

Reading results also showed widening gaps between higher- and lower-performing students, with the former regaining ground and the latter stagnating or declining.

Nation's Report Card
National Center for Education Statistics

Achievement gaps were widest in eighth-grade math scores and also grew in fourth grade as higher-performing students’ showed improvements.

The Trump administration’s new U.S. Department of Education called the results “heartbreaking.”

“Not only did most students not recover from pandemic-related learning loss, but those students who were the most behind and needed the most support have fallen even further behind,” the agency said in a statement.

“Despite the billions of dollars that the federal government invests in K-12 education annually, and the approximately $190 billion in federal pandemic funds, our education system continues to fail students across the nation.

Signs of progress

The Report Card also tracks attendance and found that absenteeism has declined since the last national assessment was released in 2022 but remains higher than it was before the pandemic.

Another sign of progress appears in fourth-grade math. Scores improved in 15 states and 14 urban districts. Several urban districts gained as many as 10 points, which is above the national average.

This story is being updated.

Matt Zalaznick
Matt Zalaznick
Matt Zalaznick is the managing editor of ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø and a life-long journalist. Prior to writing for ³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø he worked in daily news all over the country, from the NYC suburbs to the Rocky Mountains, Silicon Valley and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He's also in a band.

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