2025 Scorecard Shows Decade-Long US Reading Decline

Researchers from Harvard University, Stanford University, and Dartmouth College released the 2025 Education Scorecard on Wednesday, revealing a decade-long decline in U.S. student reading performance that began around 2013, well before the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis of state test scores from more than 5,000 school districts in 38 states and the District of Columbia found reading scores lower last year than a decade earlier in 83 percent of districts where data was available, with math scores down in 70 percent.

Nationally, students remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading levels, according to the report. National Assessment of Educational Progress results showed eighth-grade reading scores at their lowest since 1992 and fourth-grade scores at levels not seen since before 2003. The researchers noted that annual reading losses from 2017 to 2019 matched those during the pandemic years of 2019 to 2022, indicating a pre-existing erosion. Thomas Kane, faculty director of Harvard's Center for Education Policy Research and a lead researcher, described it as "the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement."