Note that these are 2023 numbers, not 2025.
Are there newer numbers?
Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
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Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#52The peak was in 2012 2012 2020 2023 Reading 263 260 256 Math 285 280 271 So people are looking at Covid and that's probably not enough. The scores are closer to those of the 80's than those in the 90's and 00's
We don't have any NAEP long-term test results for years between 2012 and 2020, because they were canceled due to budget cuts[1], so we can't use the linked data to determine whether the decline started before or during COVID.
We do have the NAEP main series test results[2]. At a first glance at the math results[3][4], it appears they peaked in 2013, then fluctuated through 2019, then dropped significantly in 2022 and somewhat rebounded in 2024, which really does suggest COVID.
[1]https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/debate-flares-anew-...
[2]https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/report_archive.aspx
[3]https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/mathematics/202...
[4]https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/mathematics/2024/g...
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#53People are talking about Covid, smartphones/screens, social media, and AI. No one has mentioned defunding public education yet. In Alaska, where I lived most of the last 20 years, education has been largely flat funded for about a decade now. Imagine running an organization in 2026 on that organization's 2016 budget. Schools have a bunch of obligations they have to spend on. Every time health care costs for staff go…
I agree with you to an extent, but many states and school districts also engaged in fiscal malpractice by using defined-benefit employee pension plans to shift costs into the future. Those plans are financial weapons of mass destruction: far too risky for employers, retirees, and taxpayers. We need to eliminate them and shift all public school employees to 403(b) defined-contribution plans. This is especially critica…
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Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#54… in mice.
Sorry - that was reflexive: “… in the US”.
I don’t think there’s any great mystery here. Every few years, you guys elect a bunch of people for whom active sabotage of public education is a sine qua non to political gerrymandering strategies driven by the self-preservation instincts of lobbyists.
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#55The right wingers are going to have a heyday with this one just like they’ve been doing with the “Swedes are getting dumber and nobody knows why” articles.
Can you explain for the non-terminally online?
They want to say that non-whites are naturally dumber than whites. There will be varying degrees of subtlety but that's what the dog whistlers are on about.
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#56People are talking about Covid, smartphones/screens, social media, and AI. No one has mentioned defunding public education yet. In Alaska, where I lived most of the last 20 years, education has been largely flat funded for about a decade now. Imagine running an organization in 2026 on that organization's 2016 budget. Schools have a bunch of obligations they have to spend on. Every time health care costs for staff go…
If increasing spending had almost no impact over time why would cutting spending have an impact?
Unfortunately there is much more to the story than a number on a line. Just because you increase spending doesn't mean that the spending isn't earmarked for items like digital projectors and virtual textbooks that have minimal impact on learning outcomes.
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#57People are talking about Covid, smartphones/screens, social media, and AI. No one has mentioned defunding public education yet. In Alaska, where I lived most of the last 20 years, education has been largely flat funded for about a decade now. Imagine running an organization in 2026 on that organization's 2016 budget. Schools have a bunch of obligations they have to spend on. Every time health care costs for staff go…
Boston Public Schools had a 50 Million dollar budget shortfall for next year. We are rapidly closing schools and eating the disruption that comes with that. Teachers do not do their best work when they don't have confidence on long-term outcomes.
To some extent, this shift is inevitable due to demographics changes - but I don't think that there has been realistic planning on how to manage a future with dramatically fewer children.
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#58Does anybody else find it super suspicious that all the percentiles declined by similar amounts?
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#59Look at Youtube Shorts in an incognito window to see the mindless crap that's popular among median users.
Or look at corporations + elites constantly attacking children for the last 40 years (pushing school vouchers, school choices, attacking teacher unions, politicizing school boards). Who do you think suffers when elites attack public education? It's always the children. Fun fact: Silicon Valley elites are big proponents of school vouchers because, like their hatred of American labor, they also hate public schools and…
And yet, the SF school district decided that math is too racist, and advanced classes in particular should be banned as doubleplusungood.
Seattle's Public Schools district is among the leading in the nation on per-student spending, yet the test scores are cratering. Its previous superintendant had an official platform of not disciplining students.
Vouchers would _improve_ the situation.
Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)
#60People are talking about Covid, smartphones/screens, social media, and AI. No one has mentioned defunding public education yet. In Alaska, where I lived most of the last 20 years, education has been largely flat funded for about a decade now. Imagine running an organization in 2026 on that organization's 2016 budget. Schools have a bunch of obligations they have to spend on. Every time health care costs for staff go…
> No one has mentioned defunding public education yet.
Public education has vast amounts of funding in the U.S. compared to other developed countries. If it does badly despite that, it's very likely that "more funding" is not the answer.