What Do the Recent NAEP Scores Tell Us — and What Do They Miss?

Last week, scores from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP, were released for twelfth graders in math and reading and for eighth graders in science, and showed declines for both groups. Often referred to as “the nation’s report card,” the test is given to samples of students in fourth, eighth, and twelfth graders across the country as one specific measurement of achievement. Students are scored into three categories: basic, proficient, and advanced.

For twelfth graders, 45% performed below the NAEP basic level in math — five percent lower than 2019, the last year the test was administered for that grade in that subject area. In reading, 32% were below basic, down from 30% in 2019. The report noted that student absenteeism, defined as missing three or more days in a month prior to taking the test, rose for twelfth graders from 25% in 2019 to 31% in 2024.

For eighth graders, science scores were the lowest they have been since 2009, with average scores declining across all student groups. In 2024, 38% scored below NAEP basic, compared to 33% in 2019 and 32% in 2015. There was also a decrease in the percent of eighth graders saying they had a “high” level of confidence in their science skills and knowledge, compared to 2019.

Understanding NAEP numbers can be tricky given that tests are not done every year and results don’t always how state data. They are also not the same as grade-level, school-based assessments, despite having the same scoring categories: basic, proficient, and advanced. This can lead to misuse of data, what one researcher in a 2013 Education Week article dubbed “misNAEPery.” And, as Professor Marty West recently wrote in an essay in Education Week, “the ‘nation’s report card’ is designed to tell us what’s happening to student achievement rather than why.”

With this in mind, we asked West, who testified about the scores before Congress this week, and Professor Andrew Ho, who studies test scores and methods for measuring educational progress, to give us their key takeaways on the latest assessments. 
 

Professor Martin West, HGSE academic dean:

• A pandemic-focused perspective obscures as much as it reveals. Achievement in each of the subjects tested — eighth grade science and twelfth grade math and reading — was already trending downward before the pandemic. Twelfth grade reading scores, for example, hit a recent peak in 2009 and fell significantly over the following decade. Twelfth grade math peaked in 2013 and also fell by 2019. Between 2015 and 2019, eighth grade science scores held steady but the scores of fourth graders (not included in the latest round of science testing) fell over that same period.
• Low-performing students, in particular, appear to be in free fall. Pre-pandemic learning loss was steepest for the nation’s lowest-performing students. In eighth grade reading, for example, scores (released in January) at the 10th percentile fell by 10 points between 2013 and 2019 and by another 9 points between 2019 and 2024. The total loss amounted to nearly two years’ worth of typical learning. During the same period, high-performing students held steady and, despite the pandemic, are scoring nearly as high as ever. The gap between the lowest-performing and highest-performing students is now widening across all subjects and grades, highlighting the stark reality that schools today are equipping only some students for postsecondary success.

Professor Andrew Ho:

• Grade 12 NAEP data show us continuing declines and worsening inequality that began in 2013, well before the pandemic. For me, though, they’re a frustrating tease: Why don't we have more data about high school achievement in this country? We should be learning from states and districts who are teaching adolescents well, not just taking national averages every five years.
• In earlier grades, NAEP gives us data for all 50 states and dozens of large districts, every 2-3 years. This has enabled some of our own research about pre- and post-pandemic learning and recovery at edopportunity.org (at Stanford) and educationrecoveryscorecard.org (at HGSE). But, in high school, we haven’t had NAEP data since 2019. And we haven’t had data for individual states since 2013.
• It’s possible that high school students did even worse in 2022 and are rebounding, as our research shows occurred in some states in earlier grades. We could learn from these states, but we don’t have the data.
• NAEP is critical. We need a more substantial investment in high school NAEP, to learn from states and districts that are teaching our high school students well.