The pandemic-era backslide in math and reading scores for students across the U.S. was not a sudden catastrophe but the continuation of a brutal, decade-long "learning recession" that began years before COVID-19's arrival. That's according to the latest Education Scorecard, an annual deep-dive into student data from The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University and Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research.
The new Scorecard, released Wednesday and in its fourth year, offers several revelations for families, educators and policymakers looking for clarity — and hope — at a time when public education has been blamed and battered for those persistent declines in student performance.
So it it bad teachers? Is it smart phones or social media that made our kids dumber? Some say when No Child Left Behind ended in 2015 teachers were no longer afraid to fail a student so grades started coming down because teachers were no longer afraid to have a failing student.
For nearly a quarter-century, from 1990 to 2013, math achievement among fourth- and eighth-graders "rose steadily," according to the Scorecard's analysis. So steadily that "the average fourth grader in 2013 could perform the same math skills as the average sixth grader could in 1990.
While D.C., Louisiana, Maryland and five other states did experience meaningful improvement between 2022 and 2025, most states continued to stagnate or, as in Florida, Arizona and Nebraska, further declined.
It's also worth noting, while schools are once again, on average, regaining ground in math and slowly turning the corner in reading, the declines that began around 2013 have been so steep and lasting that only one state, Louisiana, has returned to 2019 performance levels in both subjects.
No state has returned to 2013 levels
If you are a teacher how long have you been teaching?
The new Scorecard, released Wednesday and in its fourth year, offers several revelations for families, educators and policymakers looking for clarity — and hope — at a time when public education has been blamed and battered for those persistent declines in student performance.
So it it bad teachers? Is it smart phones or social media that made our kids dumber? Some say when No Child Left Behind ended in 2015 teachers were no longer afraid to fail a student so grades started coming down because teachers were no longer afraid to have a failing student.
For nearly a quarter-century, from 1990 to 2013, math achievement among fourth- and eighth-graders "rose steadily," according to the Scorecard's analysis. So steadily that "the average fourth grader in 2013 could perform the same math skills as the average sixth grader could in 1990.
While D.C., Louisiana, Maryland and five other states did experience meaningful improvement between 2022 and 2025, most states continued to stagnate or, as in Florida, Arizona and Nebraska, further declined.
It's also worth noting, while schools are once again, on average, regaining ground in math and slowly turning the corner in reading, the declines that began around 2013 have been so steep and lasting that only one state, Louisiana, has returned to 2019 performance levels in both subjects.
No state has returned to 2013 levels
If you are a teacher how long have you been teaching?
