“It’s so encouraging,” he said. “Although they are performing below average, (they) are trending up.”
One possible reason for the overall improvement, the report states, is the age of the students. They were 4 when the pandemic began in 2020, and only started school after most places returned to full-time attendance. This means they did not miss out on key literacy and numeracy lessons in the early years of primary school.
Those students gave researchers hope about the potential the nation could build back part of the rink it started long before COVID-19.
2. But 13-year-olds are hurt.
The report paints a less optimistic picture for 13-year-olds. Compared to the last assessment, students did not show significant improvement in reading or math.
Reading scores remain below average at the start of the pandemic, and this includes Latino students, white students, female students, economically disadvantaged students, and suburban students.
Reading scores on this test, on average, did not differ significantly from performance on the first-ever test administered in 1971.
“The lack of progress among 13-year-olds raises huge questions and should serve as a catalyst for change,” said Leslie Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Management Board, during a press briefing. Her organization sets policy related to NAEP.
For these 13-year-old students, unlike their 9-year-old counterparts, the pandemic was the backdrop to much of their elementary school experience. In 2020, they were second or third grade. These critical years for literacy and numeracy were interrupted by school closures, and this drop in performance may be one of the consequences.
3. Fewer students are reading for pleasure – than ever before.
At the same time, the report found that reading is a pastime for fewer and fewer children.
In 1984, 35% of 13-year-old students reported reading for fun every day. In 2022 and 2025, only 14% said the same. A much larger share of 9-year-olds — 37 percent — indicated they read for fun every day, but that’s down sharply from decades earlier.
4. Maths progress has been deleted for 13-year-olds.
From 1978 to 2012, average LTT math scores for 13-year-olds improved by 21 points. Climbing results were a bright spot in the data for more than 50 years. This report shows that most of those gains have been wiped out.
The lowest-performing students no longer show any gains compared to their 1978 math test scores.
“As a nation, we need to focus more on the middle school years,” Muldoon told reporters. “It’s going to take a lot of collective work, but we’ve seen progress before and it’s possible we’ll see it again.”
5. This is the last we’ll see of the Long Term Trends report for a while.
This is the first long-term NAEP trends report released since the Trump administration began making cuts to the U.S. Department of Education in 2025. Those cuts involves laying off more than half of the workers at the Institute of Educational Sciencesthe division of the department charged with measuring student achievement and monitoring and processing the data that comes from the tests students take.
After these cuts, so did the department overturned about a dozen national and state assessments of student progress in 2032—one of them is the next iteration of these tests. (Since then, plans have been announced to make up some of these exams.)
However, students will not see these questions again until 2033.
