'These results are sobering': US high-school seniors' reading and math scores plummet

[groundloop]

Source: The Guardian

The average reading and math scores of American high school seniors fell to their lowest levels in two decades in 2024, according to new national data released last week.

The results, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), found that, on average, reading scores for 12th graders were 10 points lower in 2024 than they were in 1992, when the test was first administered, and that math scores fell to their lowest levels since 2005, when the math assessment began.

[.....]

The report found that 35% of seniors “performed at or above” the NAEP’s “proficient” level in reading, and 22% were at or above that level in math.

It also stated that 45% of 12th graders scored below the NAEP’s “basic” level in math, marking a five percentage-point increase from 2019. In reading, 32% of students scored below the basic level, which was a two-point increase from 2019.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/sep/20/high-school-students-scores

---

This is what happens when television and social media tells our kids that it's cool to be stupid. When I grew up we celebrated scientists, engineers, researchers, etc. Now it's reality TV stars who contribute zero to society (except for helping keep the electorate dumbed down). It's absolutely no wonder that our technological expertise is quickly falling behind other countries.

[hlthe2b]

1. Can anyone be suprised? I've written about my frustrations (not only with our youngest, but

two other age cohorts)--who simply cannot write. The fixation on emoticon-laden 140-character texts and the near-absence of any evidence of reading (beyond these texts) is overwhelming...

And the math? When our pResident shows his lack of understanding of absolutely anything math-related (percentages, for example)... I fear some students may not be far behind him in their understanding and ability. Good thing we have given up on leading the world in science and technology, right?

Sign me "not surprised, but extremely saddened..."

[Traildogbob]

2. But the

BuyBull scores are skyrocketing. Making all employers incredibly excited about their future workforce.

[sop]

3. They have the fastest thumbs, though.

[Wednesdays]

4. It's because they don't post the Ten Commandments in every school!

[DBoon]

17. They should post Kepler's Laws instead

[pnwmom]

5. A.I.is the reason. They're not doing their own work. They have AI to do it. nt

[chowder66]

6. The decline has been happening since 2015. The article states that they think the reasons are....

Absenteeism and Reading.

"Experts point to a range of potential factors beyond absenteeism that could be contributing to the decline, including increased screen time and smartphone use, declining student engagement, and the rollback of test-based accountability since the expiration of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2015.

Carol Jago, a longtime English teacher and literacy expert at UCLA, told the Associated Press last week that students today read fewer books and spend less time with longer texts.

“To be a good reader, you have to have the stamina to stay on the page, even when the going gets tough,” Jago said. “You have to build those muscles, and we’re not building those muscles in kids.”

Balfanz added that the constant exposure to short-form and visual media in students’ daily lives may be making academic focus more difficult."

more at the link

This is also not just happening in the U.S. Screen time seems to be a wide issue.

[LisaM]

31. I agree. They don't read.

When I was a teenager, I always had my nose in a book. I gobbled them up.

I never see my nieces and nephews (ages about 15-29) reading, except for a few instances of reading fantasy series. So even when they do read, there is no range of material. They don't read classics. They don't read history. They don't read poetry.

They also don't have conversation. Trying to talk to them (and they are all nice kids) is laborious. They don't start conversations and barely respond to inquiries. It's frustrating.

[yardwork]

44. I've noticed a decline in my reading stamina since I got a smartphone.

I guess that was 10 years ago or so. Since then, I struggle to finish novels or nonfiction books.

I used to read for hours. I loved long 19th century novels.

Now I read a page or two and I see something I want to look up. I google it and then I check other sites and then I google some more and then...

If I'm noticing this as a 65 year old who read a lot from the age of 6, it's not surprising that kids aren't really learning to read anything lengthy at all.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Nonsense. Math skills in grade 12 are formed in primary grades. That's where the problem is. In 2024 AI

In 2024 AI had only been around for a couple of years and would not have had impact on math and reading. A bit of impact on writing and factual knowledge. Of course, the impact of AI is growing in 2025 and on into 2026. But the decline in the scores is not a new thing.

The main problem with math is people think they can be math illiterate because parents tell them, "It's okay kid, I had a block on math when I was in school." So the kid thinks "Oh, I can just say I have a block on it and people will sympathize."

Turn it around for reading. Nobody tries to get sympathy for a lack of reading skills. Nobody says "I'm illiterate because I have a reading block."

The main reason to study math is to be able to think logically and to be able to look at problems from many angles. People who do well in math have better chances getting into law school. People who do well in math make better doctors because they can better diagnose.

The problems result from:

* Celebrity worship of athletes, actors, and star musical performers.
* Teaching to the Test
* Decline in classroom discussion and less critical thinking.
* A culture that denigrates quiet, empathic nerds and pushes bullies to the front.

[pnwmom]

9. It's all connected. High school kids who rely on AI aren't reading on their own,

and they're not developing their ability to think logically -- just to copy and paste.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. AI is so new that it has not had much effect at all on seniors. They were sabotaged years before AI. . . nt

[moniss]

23. I would also point out that

being an effective math teacher is way more than just "Read this chapter and do the problems at the end." I had the good fortune to have some excellent math teachers in my primary and secondary education. People who knew how to reach students with how to "get it" and come at things from different angles (no pun intended). I agree 100% with you about the decline in class discussion.

I would just add that the ludicrous purge of experienced teachers over the last many years has been a major factor also. Nearly every teacher in every subject I had was one who had been at the school for at least 10 to 15 years and some much longer. Sadly those days are gone for the most part for most students. My 7th grade English teacher retired after 50 years at the same school and the crowd of her former students was massive that came to the retirement party for her. She was loved, she was tough and she made us better people and we recognized it as it she was teaching us because of the way she was as a teacher. What she imparted to her students was way more than English and grammar.

[3catwoman3]

35. I wish I'd had your good math teachers. My high school algebra teacher (9th grade) sucked.

I didn't do very well in her class and thought I just didn't "get it." It was her first year teaching. She was fired after her second year, as it turned out a whole lot of us weren't getting it. To this day, almost 60 years later, anything vaguely algebraic gives me a knot in my stomach.

Geometry was fine, and mostly so was trig.

Final marking period of senior year math was an intro to calculus. The teacher handed us a slender black book and said, "Here. This is all self-explanatory." Hah! Not to me. Only marking period in any subject that I ever got an F in.

[Walleye]

32. Republican states keep cutting funding to their public schools. Because they want "vouchers"

[MichMan]

36. So the decline is only in red states?

[Walleye]

38. No, of course, but that certainly contributes to it and the attitude towards education in general

[republianmushroom]

7. Dumbing down the populist.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. Dumbing down the populace.

Dumbing down the populist.

[GreenWave]

22. Grooming future Magats, gullible.

[republianmushroom]

24. Yup

[Timewas]

10. Really

Not any real surprise in this..Been headed that way for long time........

[llmart]

27. There was a book that came out in the late 1980's...

titled, "The Closing of the American Mind". I remember reading it, and one of the premises the author spoke of was how our country had started to denigrate institutions that focused on liberal arts degrees. I went to a liberal arts college as did my older sister and we both agreed that it made us more well-rounded people with the ability to think for ourselves and be interested in the world around us. To this day, most colleges shy away from liberal arts programs because of the false notion that graduates wouldn't be able to get a job or be a productive member of society.

[pfitz59]

13. Reading takes too much time!

Video, in all ways, is so much easier. Same with 'doing the math'. Its time consuming. Short attention span Americans aren't up to the task.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

29. Reading is FASTER than video: so much talk, so much repetition, so little really said. . . . . nt

[eppur_se_muova]

48. People post videos for the thrill of being on camera, then talk WAY too much, just to please themselves.

I seldom watch videos (except cat videos ) at all, because they're almost all the same in that regard. I usually use the progress bar to scan for anything interesting. If all I see is someone's face talking, I usually close it without watching. If you're just talking without using figures or props, everything you're saying would be just as good in text, and much faster to get through. Also less bandwidth, for those who still worry about such things.

[not fooled]

14. Future Republican voters. nt

[Lithos]

15. It's not specifcally Social Media, it's not AI doing this

As the article notes, the decline started in 2015, using indicators from before then. There are many factors, not one issue.

IMHO, it boils down to two things:

1) The huge economic gap between the haves and have-nots. In Austin, most of the failing schools are clustered in the less economically advantaged areas. People who have to work two jobs, or suffer jobs requiring long overtime, often do not have time to spend with their kids or invest in their education.

2) The huge underfunding of schools by the Federal and State governments, which often masks this behind "test-based" outcomes. States like Texas and Florida would rather fund billionaires than fund the state's future.

COVID accelerated this, for sure, as it made jobs more unstable and added a huge burden to the schools, which had to shore up their infrastructure.

Screen time is something under the control of the parents. The reason it is so prevalent is that parents would rather use it as an artificial babysitter. Point 1 above made it worse.

AI was first widely used in 2022. It is not a problem, as education issues existed well before then. However, AI definitely exposes the difficulties of "test-based" thinking, where answers are more important than processes. AI and other algorithms have many answers- but you can't judge whether they are right unless you know the process. Cue up the appeal of the bigoted far-right influencers.

[Silent Type]

16. Been going on for quite awhile.

[Mblaze]

18. Dumbed down curriculum.

Dumbed down students.

[twodogsbarking]

19. Mental math has always been fun to me and something I work at. Spelling and grammar are important too but content is

more important. It has to be a "thing" with you I guess.

[Buddyzbuddy]

20. Maybe, its because they now know any idiot can be president.

Republicans, Making America Great Again.

[Gimpyknee]

21. There's no comparison in Civics scores since it's no longer being taught.

[MichMan]

43. The ignorance seen recently regarding the First Amendment is proof of that

[kimbutgar]

25. As a substitute teacher for over 11 years now I have seen the decline and unfortunately the culprit is

Definitely the internet and computer games.

When we do silent time reading for 30 minutes I notice some kids have a hard time reading and concentrating on a book. And I had a 4th grader who struggled with the basic math like 2+7 the other day. I told her she needs to know math to manage her money when she gets older. And she wasn’t special ed either.

[Tetrachloride]

26. I don't know what plummet means

[llmart]

30. I'll help you out.

Dat der is a small, purple fruit that fell off a tree before it was ripe.

See? I got me an ejemakation, so's I know all this stuff.

[Tetrachloride]

46. exceeds expectations lol

[Ocelot II]

28. The pandemic didn't help, either.

But poor reading/writing skills have been showing up for a long time. Until about 10 years ago I taught a couple of college courses that included assigned papers, and far too many of the students didn't have the writing skills one would hope for by the time they got to college. I don't think those skills have been taught for decades.

[ancianita]

33. Oligarchs have always known that if they are to control this country and rule, they must do the following:

1. Defund
2. Deform (called "reform" in education or other institutions)
3. Stigmatize (education professionals and/or govt experts as the root cause for the above, to distract from oligarchs' extraction of education funding for themselves)
4. Privatize (no more public services or teaching for working class children)

The above formula can apply to any institution, but for now, used in the context of public education instituted as a public good.

1.
No study in the last century has yet to disprove baseline educational studies that show the top two predictors of student achievement:
First -- the socioeconomic status of students’ parents.
Second -- the Teacher.

Oligarchs know this.

Do Americans want to kick teachers out as soon as their kids complain? Do they tend to forget the American work ethic that claims that the highest achievements come with focused, systematic study, effort, and yes, sometimes some sacrifice by the family?

Did the rich reveal to Americans that they don't consider any amount of money too much to spend on THEIR kids?
Did they reveal that they pay their teachers top dollar? Know why their schools are so expensive? Because they know

You. Get. What. You. Pay. For.

No? Know why they don't tell you? They don't want competition for the mediocre snowflakes they have -- the Trumps, Mercers or techbro billionaires of the world.

2.
Human development is THE single greatest asset to any country. All our NATO and other Western allies know this. Their schools show it.

3.
America once broadly had the arts, vocational training, civics, home economics, full range of gymnastics and sports, computer labs and after school arts and sciences projects in our schools.

Why? Because our parents and rich leaders had the matching opinion that American future generations were worth it!

When did they part ways? That’s a history lesson.
Read Jonathan Kozol’s “Shame of The Nation” for the full story. And yes, that the rich abandoned the institution of public education has been going on for a long time. All the way back to the US Constitution writers who omitted education as a fundamental right.

4.
But some Americans still have that full-on education system.
Know who they are?
America’s private preparatory schools!
The kids of the rich!
https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-private-high-schools/

For decades, the rich have lied to Americans about the worth of public education.
They've been scapegoating all the country's schools and teachers now, smearing all public schools and eroding public trust in public education by using shocking headlines about one teacher, or one school.

5.
In policy, investment and public discourse, we must fight oligarch messaging and care about this country's greatest asset -- the American people -- the way teachers do.

Do not be suckered into oligarchs' negative headline messaging about your fellow citizens who are the nation's teaching professionals.
Teaching professionals, tenured or not, give the highest return on public investment at 7:1.
That is, $7 dollars of systematic educational expertise value available the nation for every $1 spent to produce college graduates whose lifetime earnings are over $1 million more than that of high school grads;
just one example -- oligarchs make sure that public education is defunded, but still demand an educated medical population;
all Americans deserve the same, not just "good enough" and more privatized, profitable palliative pain treatment.

Oligarchs have applied market values to the last standing Jeffersonian, democratizing institution of human development for this country.
Oligarchs know that literacy is the foundation of civilization, and through decades they have made sure that soon, in America, only they have it.

Solidarity from a member of AFT Local #1.

[OrwellwasRight]

45. I have one quibble

I've gone to public schools all my life. My UC education is every bit as good as an Ivy League education (perhaps better because I had to put in the work rather than being given an A because I showed up). So sometimes you don't "get what you pay for."

In fact, the student loan crisis, which exists because of defunding of public higher ed, and because employers keep increasing degree requirements, including for jobs that don't even need a BA to do, and a host of other reasons, also correlates with the trend of students applying to 30 colleges instead of 3, of every student thinking they "have" to go to an Ivy or their life is over, so they apply to all of them "just in case" they get into one... what a waste.

If people would stop assuming the most expensive schools are the best, we'd all be better off.

But yes to all the rest.

[ancianita]

47. Point well taken. Since Ivies are full of entitled prep school kids, even for them it still holds true that one only

gets out of an education what one puts into it, no matter where they go, expensive university or not. And so we see a lot of mediocre rich kids in the billionaire world, e.g., trump, and also see good ones in that world like JB Pritzker (Juris Doctor, Northwestern), and Gavin Newsom (Santa Clara University).

It's also true that though Ivies are expensive, and even if one doesn't get in, one can still make the most of higher ed since the upper half of universities are mostly state universities. If one affords one of those and is ambitious like Obama was, they can often work their way into an Ivy (like Columbia) through a transfer (from Occidental). Many Ivy grads have come in as transfers, and those schools' endowments afford lower income students some financial help. So it's true, too, that "you get what you work for..." (In my case, a one year scholarship and a couple of mentors who believed in me, were enough to get me from FSU to Northwestern)

[exboyfil]

53. Well off suburban public schools as well

The offerings at our public are simply amazing compared to what I had in the late 70s/early 80s. Highest math available was Precalculus then. Now Calculus is common along with ready access to community college and AP courses. Of course this still isn't enough as we have three prominent Christian high schools one of which just purchased the old high school. GOP determined to drain the public schools with vouchers.

[ancianita]

55. Yes. The property tax base of school districts perpetuates funding inequities and socioeconomic hierarchies of

class income inequities across generations. Richer districts provide more school funds than do poorer districts. The whole unjust property tax base for school funding is revealed in Jonathan Kozol's Shame of the Nation.

... in the 50 years since the Supreme Court in the landmark ruling of Brown v. Board of Education dismantled the previous policy of de jure segregated schools and their concept of "separate but equal". In many cities, wealthier white families continued to leave the city to settle in suburbs, with minorities comprising most of the families left in the public school system.[2] In the book Kozol quotes Gary Orfield of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who says, "American public schools are now 12 years into the process of continuous resegregation. ... During the 1990s, the proportion of black students in majority white schools has decreased ... to a level lower than in any year since 1968."...

Kozol attacks the disparity in expenditures on education between central cities and well-to-do suburbs, and the system of property taxes which most school systems and states rely on for funding.[4] He expresses outrage at inequities in expenditure, pointing out that New York City in 2002-3 spent $11,627 on the education of each child, while in Nassau County, the town of Manhasset spent $22,311, and Great Neck $19,705. He found that there are comparable disparities in other metropolitan areas, since most funding is locally based.[1] Kozol describes schools that are separated by a 15-minute drive but that offer vastly different educational opportunities. In one example, a primarily white school offers drama club and AP classes, and the nearby primarily black school requires classes like hairdressing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shame_of_the_Nation

[Coldwater]

34. Future MAGA Voters

Anti-intellectualism and LGBTQ-phobia are married at the hip. All the epithets leveled at male academics and scientists, carried the connotation of insufficient masculinity. Scholarly people also tend to use an educational, soft-spoken tone and rather complex language with many polysyllabic words, which the average idiot associates with femininity.

Also, so much for Trump being an Isolationist, in the 8 months since taking office trump has threatened military action against Panama, Canada, Denmark in order to seize Greenland, bombed Yemen over and over again, deployed B-2 bombers to Guam, nearly started a war against Iran, and sunk 3 boats allegedly carrying drugs in international waters

[sorcrow]

37. My (step)grandkids don't know their math facts

Middle school to high school.

They can barely add, and forget the multiplication tables.

I try to help. When they're with me, we cook from recipes to work on fractions. 1 1/2 cups nearly became 11 cups....

In the car, we add or multiply numbers on signs or license plates. Alas, there's little parental reinforcement and I'm not with them enough to be much more than an annoyance.

Regards,
Sorghum Crow

[Bernardo de La Paz]

40. Good that you try to help. Math is much more methods & a frame of mind than facts and much more than arithmetic. . nt

[JCMach1]

39. Check the timeline- teaching to the test under NCLB

And successors.

[flashman13]

41. You can place a large amount of blame on No Child Left Behind legislation.

It sounded like a good idea, but it dumbed down education in order to accommodate very narrow achievement tests. It forced teachers to shrink their curriculum or face disciplinary actions for failing to get meaningless high test scores. If you don't believe me ask any teacher that was teaching before 2005.

[MichMan]

42. Not too surprising after shutting down schools for a year and substituting remote learning

Which turned out in general to be pretty ineffective.

At best, students learned 2/3 of the required material, yet were promoted anyway for the next teacher to deal with. Do they even hold back students a grade anymore? As far as I know, there were no efforts made to catch them back up.

How can someone taking Algebra 1 for example only learn 2/3 of the material and then be promoted to the next grade to take Algebra II? Forcing the Algebra II teacher to spend half the year teaching what should have been covered in Algebra 1.

[LearnedHand]

49. Rather, this is what happens when republicans politicize and evangelize schools

[Aussie105]

50. It's a lazy non-think thing, common in countries where parents and kids think they are going to get by on luck.

'Luck' as in . . .

With luck, I will pass the upcoming math test.

With luck, I will marry a rich person and never have to use my brain again!

With luck, I will land a job on the basis of skills I didn't know I had.

With luck, I will do better than my parents - and without the effort they seem to need to put in.

With luck, some rich relative will die and leave me a lot of money!

There are lots of contributing factors to the problem.
But no solutions in sight.

[Coldwater]

51. and speaking of education or lack of

[nitpicked]

52. My house had lots of books

And my mother (and occasionally my father) read to me and encouraged me on reading the words for myself. I still remember about Cinnamon Bear...

By the time I went to kindergarten, I could read well beyond Dick, Jane and Spot.

I was SO bored after my eye operation...

But I made up for it in spades afterwards, and not just reading the libraries' kids' sports novels or the books with a rocket on the spine.

((Yes, I never really got into poetry, but just about everything else in the house was fair game, from excerpts from Chaucer and from Shakespeare's takes on history to my father's accounting workbooks to mythology to annual books on world statistics...))

The one thing it didn't teach me was how to write essays, so I had to take a basic English course when I went to college. At least there was a course covering science fiction...

[MrsCheaplaugh]

54. The last thing the ruling class wants is an educated population.

They ask too many damned questions.