In its final release of results from last year’s exams, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a k a “the Nation’s Report Card,” reveals that 13-year-olds’ understanding of math dropped to levels unseen since the 1990s, while their reading comprehension plummeted to 1971 levels.

That is, today’s adolescents are doing worse than their parents in math and worse than their grandparents in reading.

And while COVID lockdowns triggered the disaster, the trouble started well before then.

The NAEP tests large national samples of 4th and 8th graders every other year, keeping exams comparable to allow long-term comparisons.

Earlier releases on last year’s fourth-graders’ exams showed a similar free-fall, in all cases with lower-income students sustaining the worst damage, along with black and Hispanic kids.

Which means that, nationwide, the schools are failing to do what Americans most want them to do: provide opportunity for all.

And the COVID collapse follows a decade where NAEP scores were stagnant, which suggests the forces of decline were already building, only for the change (like so many others) to be crystalized by the pandemic.

To our minds, the underlying causes are the nationwide, early-2010s move away from academic standards and even serious school discipline, along with a rising emphasis on “social-emotional learning” and the like — all in the name of racial fairness, albeit with never any evidence such moves would truly bring better results.

The NAEP news should be a national wake-up call to re-emphasize rigor and high expectations: Kick all the non-education nonsense to the curb.

America’s future is at stake.