While elementary schools in Modesto, California, celebrate consistent improvements in reading and math, a stark national picture reveals a deepening educational crisis. Researchers from Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth have analysed state test scores from third to eighth grade for over 5,000 school districts in 38 states, allowing comparisons across the country in a national Education Scorecard.
The findings are sobering: between 2022 and 2025, only five states and the District of Columbia had meaningful growth in reading scores. Nationally, students remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading proficiency. Though slight improvements were seen in mathematics, the overall trend indicates a significant educational challenge.
Reading test scores have been falling since 2013 for eighth graders and 2015 for fourth graders, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. “The pandemic was the mudslide that had followed seven years of steady erosion in achievement,” said Thomas Kane, a Harvard professor who helped create the Education Scorecard.
Some states and school districts are making progress — largely by shifting toward phonics-based instruction and providing extra support for struggling readers. The states that improved reading scores — notably Louisiana, Maryland, Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana — all ordered schools to teach with a phonics-based approach known as the “science of reading.”
In Modesto, reading instruction was revamped during the pandemic, and math a couple years earlier. The district created a new department to help students who are still learning English and ramped up teacher training. Modesto’s test scores grew enough to represent an extra 18 weeks of learning in math and 13 weeks in reading, though overall scores remain far below grade level.
Researchers are still debating the reading recession’s causes. Possible factors include the rise of social media on smartphones and corresponding declines in kids’ recreational reading, as well as states backing off on strict consequences for schools whose students fail to make progress on standardized tests.
