Math scores for American 13-year-olds continued to decline in the latest round of national testing, reaching a low not seen for decades and extending a trend that was exacerbated by the pandemic.
“Among the lowest-performing students, math scores have returned to levels last seen in 1978 and reading scores were actually lower than when the assessment was first conducted in 1971,” the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” wrote on Twitter.
The National Parents Union, an organization that advocates for increased parental rights in schooling, demanded urgent action. “The clock is ticking for schools to spend their once-in-a-generation funding to help address pressing issues like ensuring our kids can read and do math.”
Many have pointed to the lingering effects of Covid-19 and the pandemic as the chief culprit behind the learning loss.
“This reinforces the fact that academic recovery is going to take some time,” Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a research arm within the Department of Education, told reporters.
A similar sentiment was echoed by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “The latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress is further evidence of what the Biden-Harris administration recognized from Day One: that the pandemic would have a devastating impact on students’ learning across the country and that it would take years of effort and investment to reverse the damage.”
Notably, the White House did not reference the role of teachers’ unions who consistently pushed for school closures despite mounting evidence showing children were largely immune to Covid.
Throughout the pandemic, Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, repeatedly fought plans to reopen schools for in-person learning. The group opposed such initiatives calling them “reckless, callous, cruel” in the fall of 2020.
A local affiliate in Chicago similarly battled then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2022, calling the push to open schools “rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny.”
However, charts released by the agency highlight the fact that scores have been precipitously declining since 2012. Average national math scores were 285 out of 500 back then, compared with just 271 today. Likewise, reading scores dropped from 263 to 256 over the same period of time.
Reading scores of American teenagers have also witnessed a similar decline, dropping four points since the last assessment in 2020.
Compared to a 2012 NAEP reading poll, only 13 percent of students expressed reading on a daily basis, and close to a third of teens admit they rarely engage in the activity.
“Students are entering high school who cannot read,” Senator Bill Cassidy (R,. La.) wrote in a statement. “This is intolerable. Parents should have the power to place their child in a school which is most likely to address the child’s educational need. These scores make the case for school choice better than any other argument.”
The news comes on the heels of a NAEP report in early May, revealing that civics and history test scores have declined notably in recent years. Civics scores for eighth-graders hit their lowest point since the test was first administered in 1998.
“It tells us that now is not the time for politicians to try to extract double-digit cuts to education funding, nor is it the time to limit what students learn in U.S. history and civics classes,” Education Secretary Cardona said following the announcement.