# Anatomy of a ‘Learning Recession’: Academic Losses Began in 2013, Report Finds Latest release from Education Scorecard argues that the spread of social media — and a rollback of accountability — hurt students long before COVID. May 13, 2026 Kevin Mahnken The United States entered a [“learning recession”](https://www.the74million.org/tag/learning-recovery/) in 2013 that it has struggled mightily — and thus far ineffectively — to escape, according to a report unveiled Wednesday by a group of respected social scientists. A steep drop in student performance was already visible during the first Trump presidential term, with [reading](https://www.the74million.org/tag/reading/) scores falling roughly as much before the pandemic as they did during its peak. The disquieting findings come from the latest release of the [Education Scorecard](https://educationscorecard.org/), a data project spearheaded by scholars at Dartmouth, Harvard, and Stanford. Rolled out in 2022, the collaborative initially aimed to chart how quickly schools bounced back from the disruption of remote learning. Now in its fifth year, the research team has turned their perspective backward in time to examine events leading up to the academic crash. Among those developments, the newest dispatch devotes special attention to two: the rollback of school accountability policies that were the hallmark of the federal [No Child Left Behind](https://www.the74million.org/tag/no-child-left-behind/) law, and the spread of [social media](https://www.the74million.org/tag/cell-phones/) to younger children. While acknowledging a lack of firm causal evidence, the authors argue that the parallel trends helped precipitate a downward spiral in student outcomes. Thomas Kane (Harvard University) Thomas Kane, a professor of economics at Harvard and one of the Scorecard’s creators, said that taking a longer perspective on student achievement illustrates not merely the enormity of the loss, but also the impressive progress that preceded it. Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (a federal exam often referred to as [the Nation’s Report Card](https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/)) show that fourth- and eighth-graders steadily grew more proficient in core academic subjects from 1990 through 2015, absorbing the equivalent of two grade levels in math knowledge during that time. Kane said it was all the more frustrating to see those gains, which he stacked against the most important public policy successes of the last half-century, substantially unwound over the last decade. “If you had told me in 1990 that we would see that kind of rise in fourth- and eighth-grade math, I’d have said you were crazy,” Kane reflected. “And yet it happened, and nobody celebrated.” Morgan Polikoff (University of Southern California) The post-pandemic era has seen a number of experts explore the beginnings of the K–12 downturn, which first became evident through NAEP data near the end of the Obama presidency. Those [investigations](https://edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1197) have [repeatedly established](https://www.hoover.org/research/pandemic-perspective-us-learning-losses-twenty-first-century) that learning losses started well before 2020, while shining less light on possible explanations. Morgan Polikoff, a professor of education at the University of Southern California, said the Scorecard was laudable in its ambition to “tell the whole story,” even in the absence of dispositive proof. “This paper is, by far, the most comprehensive effort to explore the two main hypotheses for what’s gone wrong in education over the last decade-plus,” he said. What remains uncertain is the path forward for schools and communities that have seen a generation of students learn less successfully than the one preceding it. Kane and his collaborators recommend a reorientation in federal research priorities to study the impact of social media use, as well as wide-ranging responses to the problem of chronic absenteeism. In the meantime, their release includes a set of local case studies showing where districts have led meaningful improvements in the last few years. Among them are a number of major urban school systems not historically numbered among the nation’s top performers, such as Atlanta, Birmingham, Alabama and Compton, California. Read more at [the74million.org.](https://www.the74million.org/article/anatomy-of-a-learning-recession-academic-losses-began-in-2013-report-finds/?utm_source=The%2074%20Million%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=97e93a8192-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_07_27_07_47_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_077b986842-97e93a8192-177413880) See also:- [ Attendance ](/focus-areas/attendance) - [ Cell Phones ](/focus-areas/cell-phones) - [ COVID-19 Impact ](/focus-areas/covid-19-impact) - [ Math Instruction ](/focus-areas/math-instruction) - [ Reading Instruction ](/focus-areas/reading-instruction) - [ In the News ](/cepr-in-the-news) - [ Education Recovery Scorecard ](/projects/education-recovery-scorecard) - [ 2026 ](/year/2026) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)