A new Nation’s Report Card shows drops in science, math and reading scores

New test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, show eighth-graders’ science scores have fallen 4 points since 2019 and 12th-graders’ math and reading scores have fallen 3 points in the same time period.

The tests were administered between January and March 2024.

This is the first NAEP score release since the Trump administration began making cuts to the U.S. Education Department. Those cuts, included laying off more than half the workers at the Institute of Education Sciences, IES, the arm of the department charged with measuring student achievement and overseeing and processing the data that comes from the tests students take.

After those cuts, the department also canceled about a dozen national and state assessments of student progress through 2032 — about half those tests were planned for 12th-graders.

NAEP, which provides data for the Nation’s Report Card, is mandated by Congress and is the largest nationally representative test of student learning. NAEP tests were first administered in 1969.

Today, the assessments in math and reading are given every two years to a broad sample of students in fourth and eighth grades; 12th-graders receive them every four years. NAEP also administers voluntary assessments in other subjects outside the congressional mandate.

What to make of the test scores

Reading scores dipped for 12th-graders, except among the highest-achieving students, compared with 2019, the last time this test was administered. Compared with NAEP’s first 12th-grade reading assessment, in 1992, today’s average score is 10 points lower.

“Scores for our lowest-performing students are at historic lows — continued declines that began more than a decade ago,” Matthew Soldner, acting director of IES, told reporters. “My predecessor warned of this trend, and her predecessor warned of this trend as well. And now I am warning you of this trend.”

The 2024 assessment tested students for reading comprehension skills and surveyed them about opportunities to learn and engage with reading in and outside school.

Twelfth-grade math scores dropped the same amount as reading scores and were 3 points lower than in 2005, the first time this version of the math test was administered.

“These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted, focused action to accelerate student learning,” Soldner said.

Among eighth-graders, the average science score dropped 4 points compared with 2019. Student scores decreased across the board, for low- and high-performing students alike.

In addition to measuring students’ academic achievement, NAEP also surveys things like students’ comfort level with certain subjects and their attendance. In those surveys, a smaller share of eighth-graders indicated high levels of confidence in their science skills compared with their counterparts in 2019.

And nearly one-third of 12th-graders reported missing three or more days of school in the month prior to taking the assessment in 2024, an increase from 2019.

How changes at the Education Department are impacting student assessments

Legally, the federal government has no power over what is taught in schools. So while Tuesday’s release measured student achievement under President Biden, experts avoid linking NAEP scores to any particular administration.

“The federal government is in a unique position with these test scores to be the scoreboard of American education, to tell us what’s happening and for whom,” says Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “[That] doesn’t mean that it has the capacity to fix these issues. That’s a job for the states.”

But behind the scenes, federal changes have had an impact on how the Nation’s Report Card is administered, according to a senior official at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which administers NAEP.

The official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the cuts to the U.S. Education Department left only two senior staffers assigned to NAEP and said that NCES relied on additional support from colleagues in other departments to get the new release out.

NCES confirmed that, in order to meet congressional testing mandates in 2026 and 2028, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has approved a waiver to add at least eight staff positions before the end of the year.

Marty West is on the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and is vice chair of the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), which sets NAEP policy. He says he’s confident in the department’s ability to meet NAEP deadlines moving forward: “The preparation for the tests that will be administered in early 2026, for example, really began as much as five years ago and were pretty far down the road by the spring of 2025.”

There will also be fewer deadlines to meet. This spring, the NAGB slashed about a dozen planned assessments — for fourth-grade science, 12th-grade U.S. history and writing across fourth-, eighth- and 12th-graders — that were scheduled to be administered over the next seven years.

“It was not too unusual in terms of the history of the program,” West says of restructuring the assessment schedule. “We felt [it] was an important step so that we could allow our colleagues at NCES to focus their energies on the tests that we felt were most important.” Among them are the tests for math and reading.

The NAGB is an independent, nonpartisan organization made up of state and local representatives.

“There are no federal officials on the National Assessment Governing Board, and that’s by design,” West says. “Although it is a federal assessment … it is designed and administered in a way that meets the needs of state and local governments and the broader public.”