The headlines last week told the sad story. The New York Times’ title read, “American Children’s Reading Skills Reach New Lows,” while The 74 proclaimed, The New NAEP Scores Are Alarming. Hope Is Not a Strategy for Fixing Them.” The Wall Street Journal announced, “American Kids Are Getting Even Worse at Reading, Test Scores Show.
The stories shared lowlights from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test given periodically to the nation’s students. The results from the 2024 reading and math test, given to 4th and 8th graders, were announced last week and showed that 4th graders continued to lose ground, with reading scores slightly lower, on average, than in 2022 and much lower than in 2019.
In 2019, 35% of 4th-graders scored at or above the test’s reading proficiency standard, but that figure dropped to 33% in 2022 and, further, to 31% in 2024. The percentage of fourth graders at “below basic” was the largest in 20 years, at 40%. Some 33% of 8th graders scored below “basic” on the exam—a record low.
The news was especially bleak for our lowest performing students, who are “reading at historically low levels,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP. “We need to stay focused in order to right this ship.”
Worsening reading skills have wide-ranging consequences. Poor test scores have been linked to the economic success of both the nation and individuals. Students with limited reading skills are less likely to graduate from high school, and as adults, they are more likely to be incarcerated.
Mindy Sjoblom of On Your Mark Education, a group dedicated to using the science of reading to promote literacy, asserts, “When students are not reading on grade level by third grade, their life-long choices are severely limited. One long-term study found that students who fail to meet this bar are 4 times more likely to drop out of school. In fact, 88% of these dropouts were struggling readers in third grade.”
It is worth noting that we’ve seen the same pattern recently on other tests—TIMSS, PIAAC,
i-Ready, MAP, and state assessment results—explains Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
The only bright spot on the NAEP was very slight progress by higher-achieving children in math.
Why is this happening?
The teachers’ unions, of course, say we don’t spend enough money on education. Union boss Randi Weingarten, who never misses an opportunity to say something absurd, claims the “stagnant” NAEP scores show the need for “expanding community schools to provide wraparound services”—e.g., social and healthcare services—and “securing investments for smaller class sizes, good ventilation and the tools and technology for 21st-century learning.”
If lack of money is an issue, perhaps Weingarten would like to explain why the results were so poor after taxpayers forked over $190 billion to aid students in the pandemic recovery period.
Others blame the excessive student use of cell phones, too much TV-watching, social media addiction, the pandemic, etc. While these factors may have had some effect on the abysmal test results, there’s one fix that would significantly improve our educational woes: parental freedom.
Coincidentally, the NAEP scores were released in the middle of National School Choice Week, and indeed, parental freedom is certainly on the move.
To continue reading, go to
https://www.forkidsandcountry.org/blog/the-sandstorm-the-national-assessment-of-educational-regress
