The grim news courses through the latest Nation’s Report Card: Half a century of educational “progress” has yielded no progress at all. The National Center for Education Statistics’ long-term trend assessments for American 13-year-olds in math and reading make for tough reading. The upshot? Reading scores fell to where they started when the tests were first given in the 1970s, when Richard Nixon was president. And math scores were nearly as dismal.
These young teens are at a key moment in their educational careers — they are finishing up the basics and should be preparing for the challenge of high school. Yet they are struggling across all achievement levels and nearly all demographic groups. There is one saving grace. We know how bad things are because the Nation’s Report Card has been keeping track for half a century with consistent testing that provides a solid base line of performance across generations. If we know how bad they are, we know what needs fixing. This is also an indirect but bracing reminder of the importance of accountability in public education — and, by extension, in Florida’s exponential expansion of taxpayer-funded vouchers that begins Saturday.
Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress range from 0 to 500, but the historical averages cluster between 255 and 285. The 2023 average scores for 13-year-olds declined 4 points in reading (which NAEP calls significant) and 9 points in math compared to the previous exam, given just before the pandemic disrupted everything. But COVID-19 can’t take all the blame. Scores were already falling. Compared to a decade ago, the average scores dropped 7 points in reading and 14 points in math.
