There’s yet another piece of evidence that the pandemic had a devastating impact on learning for kids in the U.S. Across the board, student test scores dropped to the lowest levels in decades. Math scores for fourth- and eighth-graders saw the largest decrease ever; reading scores dropped to levels not seen since 1992.
The alarming findings come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress — also referred to as the “nation’s report card” — a standardized test that’s used as an assessment tool, but hasn’t been administered since 2019. The decline was evident among high- and low-performing students in every state and region, with no area spared.
Declines among New Jersey students were slightly steeper than the national average. No state saw a marked improvement in average test scores, even those that returned to in-person learning sooner than others.
