Next Nation's Report Card due out on January 29; Will Provide Key Information about Student Achievement and Academic Recovery

Next Nation's Report Card due out on January 29
Will Provide Key Information about Student Achievement and Academic Recovery

The National Assessment Governing Board (Governing Board) has set January 29, 2025 as the date for the next Nation's Report Card release. That's when we'll find out how 4th grade and 8th grade students nationwide, in states, and in urban districts are doing in reading and math, based on assessments students took in 2024.

What The Nation’s Report Card tells us about the state of K-12 education

The last Nation’s Report Card was released in October 2022 and showed historic declines in student achievement.

Every state saw score drops from 2019 to 2022 in at least one subject and grade (with the exception of the Department of Defense schools). Moreover, 21 states – or more than 40% of states – saw declines on all four assessments.

As a nation we saw:

• Substantial, pervasive declines in student achievement across grades and subjects in the pandemic era.
• Lower-achieving students continuing to lose ground, extending a pre-pandemic trend.
• More students in 2022 failing to score at NAEP Proficient (the goal) and NAEP Basic across grades and subjects, compared to 2019.

In 2022, lower-performing 4th graders experienced much sharper declines in both math and reading than their higher-performing peers. However, 8th graders working at all achievement levels saw significant declines, particularly in math.

The growing gap between lower- and higher-performers began in 2015. Looking at 4th grade reading, the nation’s lowest-performing students (those at the 25th percentile and below) started seeing declines; while their higher-performing peers (those at the 75th percentile and above) made gains or stayed flat.

How has student math and reading achievement changed over time?

NAEP reading and math trends stretch back to the early 1990s for the nation and states, allowing us to look at how this generation of students is doing compared to previous ones.

In reading, the story is one of minimal progress from the early 1990s to 2015 (for 4th grade) and 2013 (for 8th grade), followed by declines at both grades. That persisted into 2019 and significantly worsened in 2022, when students in both grades were scoring about where they were in the early 1990s.

In math, we saw significant progress from 1990 to about 2013. After that, scores generally did not change much until the pandemic, when they dropped sharply at both grade levels. Scores were still higher in math in 2022 than in the early 1990s, but substantially lower than their peak in 2011.

Similar patterns emerge in the same period of time across the different NAEP achievement levels.

When students reach the NAEP Proficient level on The Nation's Report Card, that means they've demonstrated competency over challenging material. For example, in reading, 4th graders who reach NAEP Proficient should be able to provide an opinion using relevant information from text or answer how characters influence one another. In math, they should be able to add and subtract multi-digit whole numbers, fractions, and decimals in both single and multi-step problems.

This bar chart shows changes over time for 8th grade math – the subject and grade with the most severe declines in 2022.

In 2022, only 26% of eighth graders nationally scored at or above NAEP Proficient in math, down from 34% in 2019. This proportion is not statistically different from performance in 2000, more than two decades ago. This means that in 2022, only about a quarter of our nation’s 8th grade students could likely solve problems involving capacity, area, and weight or apply strategies to solve Pythagorean Theorem problems.  

How will these scores impact students beyond the classroom?

Of course, assessment results aren't all that matters when it comes to student well-being and success. However, research shows these declines can have widespread and harmful impacts on America's youth.

Stanford economist and former Governing Board member Rick Hanushek found NAEP score declines will lead to long-term income loss for students and significantly reduced economic activity for states. Researchers Douglas Staiger and Thomas Kane project that states with steep academic declines will see declines in high school graduation rates and college enrollment and increases in teen pregnancy and arrests.

How can leaders and decision makers use NAEP data to create change?

Education leaders and policymakers can use NAEP in important ways to drive decision making and create positive changes that help all students thrive.

Both NAEP and end-of-year state assessment data are publicly released, and disparities between those results can serve as a reality check, prompting important conversations about academic expectations for students and whether standards align with student goals and workforce needs.

Many states also look to NAEP as a resource to inform design and planning work for their own standards and assessments. Some states use NAEP to push for a higher bar when it comes to challenging students and setting standards. High expectations alone won’t improve outcomes for kids, but they're a necessary precondition to helping students achieve higher academically.

Massachusetts was one of the earliest to raise its standards in this way in the 1990s and is widely cited for its status as a top performer in every NAEP-tested grade and subject.

And, Mississippi, under the leadership of then-Superintendent and former Governing Board Member Carey Wright, raised standards to meet NAEP expectations a decade ago, helping to fuel major reading gains in the Magnolia State.

What to expect for the 2024 Nation’s Report Card.

The NAEP assessment is a common yardstick through which we look at how well education systems are serving students. It can also serve as a catalyst for change; to:

• Shine a light on achievement trends and inform policymaking at every level;
• Inform the public on how our education systems are serving students;
• Compare and learn from other states.

What the 2024 results show matters, and the nation should look to see if students are back to pre-pandemic levels or have surpassed those levels (and if so, for which student groups and where); or if scores are stagnant or down, what actionable steps can better support students.

The National Assessment Governing Board (Governing Board) sets policy for the Nation’s Report Card, also called the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP. Created by Congress in 1988, the Governing Board is an independent, nonpartisan board whose 26- members include governors, state legislators, local and state school officials, educators, business representatives and members of the general public. For more information about the Governing Board, visit www.nagb.gov.