Struggling High School Seniors Fall Even Further Behind on ‘Nation’s Report Card’
High school seniors’ average reading and math scores have dropped on the “nation’s report card”—and the scores of students struggling the most have fallen to historic lows.
Results released today from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress show that more students than ever before are scoring below NAEP’s threshold for mastery of “basic” skills. It’s the first time the tests have been given to 12th graders since before the pandemic.
The country’s 8th graders also lost ground in science, erasing the average growth students had made in the subject since 2009.
The results continue a trend that predates the pandemic: The nation’s lowest performers are falling even further behind. Matthew Soldner, the acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, called the findings “sobering.”
“These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted, focused action to accelerate student learning,” he said at a Monday briefing with reporters. The latest 4th and 8th grade reading and math scores, released in January of this year, showed the same pattern.
Absenteeism is also up among high school seniors. Almost a third, 31%, said they missed three or more days of school in the previous month, compared with 26% in 2019.
Overall, 12th graders who took the test in 2024 were less prepared for college than their 2019 peers, according to NCES’ analysis of the scores. Only 35% met that bar in reading, compared with 37% in 2019, and 33% in math compared with 37% in 2019.
Results released amid uncertainty at the Institute for Education Sciences
These results come as operations at NCES, and its parent organization, the Institute for Education Sciences, face uncertainty following federal staffing cuts at the U.S. Department of Education earlier this year.
Following these widespread reductions in force, representatives from the National Assessment Governing Board, the organization that sets policy for NAEP, announced some tests will shrink in scope over the next decade—though the main reading and math tests in 4th and 8th grade, which are required by law, will continue as scheduled.
In a press call days before the scores’ release, a senior NCES official said that the agency plans to hire additional staff to work on development and administration of NAEP assessments.
This latest round of results throws into sharp relief how crucial it is to have the test—the only nationally comparable assessment of student abilities on this scale—for identifying persistent trends, said Thomas Kane, a professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
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