The ‘Nation’s Report Card’ is out. The results are sobering, including in Pa. and N.J.
Student scores in Pennsylvania and New Jersey were little changed from the last National Assessment of Educational Progress, given in 2022.
![The National Assessment of Educational Progress — known as the 'Nation's Report Card' — released test results in reading and math Wednesday, showing that students still haven't rebounded since the pandemic.](https://www.inquirer.com/resizer/v2/ZOPTFWM7CNGTZLSDN4BTGWBOCY.jpg?auth=85aaf644697b4da5fcfd9496cb4f408fe3d62ae2535fe38e29dc5c4d53f57900&width=760&height=507&smart=true)
Students’ reading scores continued to slide in the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress from 2024, though there were some gains in math.
But even with the uptick in math scores among fourth graders, students nationally are still faring worse than before the pandemic, with widening divides between low- and high-achieving students, according to the NAEP results, which were released Wednesday and come out every other year.
“The nation’s report card is out, and the news is not good,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. “We’re not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground students lost during the pandemic, and where we are seeing signs of the recovery, they’re mostly in math, and largely driven by higher-performing students.”
» READ MORE: Philly student performance improved in 2024, but still lags other big-city school systems, national test results show
Here’s how Pennsylvania and New Jersey matched up on the tests, which were administered to 235,000 fourth graders and 230,000 eighth graders across the country in early 2024:
Little change in Pennsylvania or New Jersey
Pennsylvania and New Jersey largely mirrored the national trend, with no measurable changes in proficiency scores from 2022. In both states, more students achieved proficiency on the NAEP tests than the nation as a whole, though fewer students are scoring proficient than in 2019.
“Most jurisdictions are not at or near where we were before the pandemic,” Carr said.
In Pennsylvania, 33% of fourth graders were proficient in reading last year, compared with 34% in 2022 and 40% in 2019. (Testing was delayed in 2021 because of the pandemic.) In eighth grade, 31% were proficient in reading, the same as in 2022, and compared with 35% in 2019. (”Proficiency” means students have demonstrated competency over challenging material; more students meet NAEP’s “basic” level, which requires partial mastery of the material.)
In fourth-grade math — an area officials called a bright spot nationally, though Pennsylvania and New Jersey were not states that reported significant gains by NAEP’s measures — 41% of Pennsylvania students scored proficient, compared with 40% in 2022 and 47% in 2019. Among eighth graders in the state, 31% scored proficient in math, compared with 27% in 2022 and 39% in 2019.
The New Jersey story was similar: 38% of fourth graders scored proficient in reading last year, the same as in 2022. In 2019, the share was 42%. In eighth grade, 38% were proficient, compared with 42% in 2022 and 43% in 2019.
In math, 44% of New Jersey fourth graders were proficient, compared with 39% in 2022 and 48% in 2019. And in eighth grade, 37% were proficient, compared with 33% in 2022 and 44% in 2019.
A math boost in Philly
Some fourth and eighth graders in Philadelphia took the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA), a NAEP test specifically for the nation’s largest school systems.
Proficiency increased for all Philadelphia students, with the largest jump — six percentage points — in fourth-grade math. All other student groups’ performance was termed not “significantly different,” according to NAEP officials.
Fourth graders’ proficiency jumped two percentage points, to 17% meeting federal standards, over the 2022 reading results, and six points in math, to 19% proficient. Eighth graders posted a one-percentage-point increase in reading, and two percentage points in math, to 15% proficient.
Philadelphia still ranks near the bottom of student performance nationally in all exams, and has not yet reached its post-pandemic levels of achievement. Still, Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said he was delighted — and surprised — by the increases.
“It takes time, and you have some ebbs and flows, but you’re staying for the long haul,” Watlington said. “The same thing is true for progress in a public school district, particularly a big-city school district like this one, the nation’s eighth-largest.”
Reading is a ‘major concern,’ and not just since the pandemic
The most sobering results nationally were in reading, where scores are still declining years after the onset of the pandemic. In 2024, the percentage of eighth graders reading below the NAEP Basic level was 33% — the highest share in the assessment’s history, officials said. The percentage of fourth graders who scored below NAEP Basic, meanwhile, was 40%, the largest in 20 years.
“This is a major concern — a concern that cannot be blamed solely on the pandemic,” said Carr, who said reading scores began to decline in 2017. “Our nation is facing complex challenges in reading.”
The data do not reflect the reason for the declines, Carr said, though she noted factors including chronic absenteeism. She also noted that more students read on devices, and fewer students are reporting reading for enjoyment.
While reading instruction has undergone a rethinking nationwide, Carr said it was too soon to say whether recent curricular changes were paying off. She pointed to Louisiana, a rare state where fourth-grade reading scores have surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
“I would not say we cannot turn this around. It’s been demonstrated that we can, even in reading,” she said.
A widening achievement gap
Masked in the averages is a concerning trend, officials said: The achievement gap is widening.
While eighth graders showed progress in math last year, the improvements were driven by increases among higher-performing students, Carr said. Lower performers, however, did worse than in the past; the gap between the highest and lowest performers in eighth-grade math was the widest it has ever been, she said.
The lowest-performing students are also reading at historically low levels, Carr said.
She said some of the gap could be attributable to student absenteeism, which decreased last year but remains higher than before the pandemic. Among eighth-grade students taking the 2024 NAEP math test, 12% reported being absent for five or more days in the month prior.
“There’s a strong relationship between absenteeism and performance in these data,” with lower-performing students more likely to be absent, Carr said.