U.S. Students Just Scored Their Lowest Marks in History

The kids are not doing so alright. New federal data out this week suggests that high school seniors’ math and reading skills have sunk dramatically in the wake of the pandemic.

On Tuesday, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—the first collected in the post-pandemic era. It found that 12th graders’ average math and reading scores in 2024 were the lowest on record, while 8th graders’ science scores also dropped since the last measure.

“These results are sobering,” NCES Acting Commissioner Matthew Soldner said in a statement from the organization.

The “Nation’s Report Card”

The NAEP is a project run by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which is part of the U.S. Department of Education, and it’s commonly known as the Nation’s Report Card.

The organization conducts regular tests in mathematics, reading, and other subjects among a nationally representative sample of fourth, eighth, and 12th graders. The primary assessments are performed every two years for the country’s fourth and eighth graders and every four years for the 12th graders.

In 2024, 12th graders scored the lowest in mathematics on average since 2005, when the current version of the test was implemented. They also scored the lowest in reading on average since 1992, when the NAEP began its regular assessments. In math, 45% of 12th-graders performed below the NAEP Basic achievement level this past year; in reading, 32% of 12th-graders performed below the NAEP Basic achievement level.

High school seniors are also missing school more often. 31% of 12th-graders reported missing three or more days from school in the previous month in 2024, compared to 26% who said the same in 2019.

Meanwhile, 8th graders’ average scores in science declined between 2019 and 2024 and were the lowest since 2009. About 38% of eighth-graders performed below the NAEP Basic achievement level.

Why are kids doing worse in school?

These assessments are notably the first of their kind to be conducted in the post-pandemic era.

Several studies have found that the pandemic and its disruptions to daily life, which include remote learning for many students, also worsened children’s well-being and educational development, though these impacts were not necessarily felt equally across different ages and populations. Newer issues like the rapid proliferation of generative AI might also be harming kids’ ability to learn.

But Soldner cautions that at least some of the decline seen in these scores is likely the result of long-simmering factors.

“The drop in overall scores coincides with significant declines in achievement among our lowest-performing students, continuing a downward trend that began even before the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

Dire as these scores are, the situation could get worse. In his second term, President Donald Trump has implemented drastic cuts in funding and jobs from the Department of Education as part of an effort to effectively dismantle the agency for good, while the GOP-led congress is set to secure further cuts to the agency’s budget next fiscal year.