Basic skills scores sink significantly for 13-year-olds, showing pandemic learning losses

Math and reading scores in a key national exam given in 2022 dropped starkly among 13-year-olds across the U.S.

The Long-Term Trends National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam was last given before the pandemic, in the 2019-20 school year. The test measures basic skills in reading and math.

But after COVID-19 closures and the fallout of pandemic learning, average math scores fell nine points, while reading declined by four points. Compared with a decade ago, the dip was more significant — math scores were 14 points lower, and reading down seven points.

Basic skills scores for 13-year-olds have not been this low since 2004 in reading, and 1990 in math. And the 14-point gap in the 2022-23 results from a decade ago represent the biggest drop in math scores in half a century.

Keep in mind that the students who took the exam — mostly eighth graders, but some seventh graders — were 10 when the pandemic hit and disrupted schools, said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

“These results show that there are troubling gaps in the basic skills of these students,” Carr said at a news conference.

COVID exacerbated children’s learning challenges across the board, but it particularly challenged lower-performing students, who were already falling behind their peers before the pandemic, Carr said.

“The green shoots of academic recovery that we had hoped to see have not materialized, as we continue to see worrisome signs about student achievement and well-being more than two years after most students returned for in-person learning,” Carr said in a statement.

There’s a “huge scale of challenge,” Carr said, noting shifts in reading habits, rising mental health challenges, and other changes in school climate that have come along with declining test scores. “And we really have to stay focused on helping all children succeed.”

The exam asked students to answer questions demonstrating mastery of foundational skills, such as finding information in a passage of 50 words, or calculating the area of a square — questions much simpler than those in the main NAEP, which is given to students in fourth, eighth, and 12th grades and is known as the Nation’s Report Card.

Scores declined for virtually every group of students, including white, Black, Hispanic, American Indian/Alaska Native, andmultiracial cohorts, with drops ranging from six points for white students to 20 points for American Indian/Alaska Native students.

Both girls’ and boys’ scores dropped, as did scores for students across all regions of the U.S. and school locations. Students attending Catholic schools did not show measurable differences from prior years’ scores in math.

Black students, white students, and multiracial students’ reading performance dropped; there was no statistical difference in scores of Hispanic students, American Indian/Alaska Native students, and Asian students.

Reading performance was down for students learning in cities, suburbs, and rural areas. Catholic school students’ reading scores were not measurably different, either.

Just 13% of students reported that they read for pleasure outside of school nearly every day, 3 percentage points lower than the 2020 results, and 13 percentage points lower than the 2012 results.

Students who said they read for fun performed better on the exam. Fifty-one percent of students who scored in the top performance tier said they read for fun at least once a week; 42% of students who scored in the bottom tiers reported never or hardly ever reading for fun.

“Students need to really develop a culture and an appreciation, a love for reading outside, not just in school but also outside school,” said Carr.

The percentage of students who miss five or more days of school every month has doubled since 2020, as measured by the long-term trends exam.

Ten percent of students reported being absent five or more days every month in 2023, up from 5% in 2020.

Lower absence correlated to higher average scores in reading and math.

When asked what kind of mathematics they were taking this year, more students said they were taking regular mathematics; 42% versus 28% in 2020, and the percentages of students taking pre-algebra and algebra both dropped.

Overall, 22% of students said they were taking pre-algebra, down from 29%, and 24% of students said they were taking algebra, down from 34%.

Kids who take algebra in eighth grade are much more likely to take advanced math classes and enter well-paying jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math fields.

The exams were given to a nationally representative sample of 8,700 13-year-olds.

The data give a nationwide snapshot onlyand results are not available on the state or district level.