American 9-year-olds suffered a dismal drop in their math and reading scores during the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest federal assessment data shows.
The report released Thursday by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), popularly known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” paints a bleak picture of how decades of academic progress were erased in the past two years, a period marked by prolonged school closures, on-and-off remote learning, and amplified social isolation.
Combining data collected from the winter of 2020—prior to the pandemic and widespread school closure—with that from the winter of 2022, the report shows that average long-term math scores fell for the first time since the test began in the 1970s. Reading scores also saw the biggest decline since the 1980s….