A new national report finds that student achievement began declining years before the COVID-19 outbreak, and many school districts are still struggling to recover.
WASHINGTON — U.S. students were struggling academically years before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted classrooms, and many middle-income school districts are still lagging behind in recovery, a new study shows. country report Researchers from Harvard University, Stanford University and Dartmouth College.
The Education Scorecard 2025 found that the United States entered a “learning recession” around 2013, when progress in math and reading stalled and student achievement began to decline.
Researchers say reading scores were already declining before the pandemic, with the rate of decline from 2017 to 2019 comparable to the rate of decline during the pandemic. Eighth-grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress are now at their lowest levels since 1990, the report said. Meanwhile, fourth-grade reading scores have dropped to pre-2003 levels.
The report analyzed the test scores of approximately 35 million students in grades 3 to 8 between 2022 and 2025.
“Student achievement has been eroding for seven consecutive years, and this pandemic is a mudslide,” said Tom Kane, faculty director of Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy. “The ‘learning decline’ began a decade ago, when policymakers shut down early warning systems for test-based accountability and social media took over children’s lives.”
Researchers found that the post-pandemic recovery was “U-shaped”, with the richest and poorest areas seeing the greatest academic gains. The average improvement was smallest in middle-income districts, where 30 to 70 percent of students receive federally subsidized lunches.
Federal pandemic relief funds could help fuel recovery in the poorest areas, the report said. Without this aid, many low-income areas may remain at 2022 levels, researchers said.
After the epidemic, math scores rebounded faster, returning to pre-2013 improvement rates between 2022 and 2024. However, reading scores continued to decline in 2024 before showing early signs of improvement in 2025.
Researchers have linked many reading outcomes to “reading science” reforms, which focus on evidence-based reading instruction. States such as Maryland, Louisiana, Tennessee and Kentucky have seen improvements in reading proficiency while implementing comprehensive literacy reforms, the report said.
The report also noted that chronic absences are an ongoing barrier to academic recovery. About 23% of students will be chronically absent from school in the 2024-25 school year, down from peak levels during the pandemic but still above the pre-pandemic level of 15%.
The researchers also highlighted 108 “rising districts” that showed strong gains in both math and reading despite facing similar demographic and economic challenges as neighboring districts.
