US students’ reading scores are ‘plateauing,’ assessment shows

American students are struggling with reading. And the country’s education system hasn’t found a way to make it better.

In fact, fourth and eighth grade reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress essentially haven’t budged in 10 years. That’s causing some alarm, considering the number of reforms aimed at American schools over the past decade: stronger academic standards, more tests, stricter teacher evaluations and laws that discourage schools from promoting third graders if they can’t read proficiently, to name a few.

“Reading has just been more or less plateauing, stagnating,” said Peggy Carr, a leader of the assessments division for the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP to a representative sample of students across the USA every two years.

How bad are the reading scores?

Results of the 2019 NAEP, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, showed elementary and middle school students scored worse in reading than they did two years ago.

Specifically, 35% of fourth graders were proficient in reading in 2019, slightly down from 37% in 2017 and barely up from 33% of such students considered proficient a decade ago.

About 34% of eighth graders were proficient in reading this year, a drop from 36% in 2017 and only a bit better than 32% in 2009.

To be clear, the national exams set a high bar for proficiency – higher than most state achievement tests. But they’re the only consistent measure of how students nationwide are doing in core subjects over time. A sample of about 600,000 public and private school students in fourth and eighth grade took the reading and math exams in 2019. Their results were released Wednesday.

“Since the first reading assessment in 1992, there’s been no growth for the lowest-performing students in either fourth or eighth grade,” Carr said. “Our students struggling the most with reading are where they were nearly 30 years ago.”

Are math scores any better?

In the short term, not really. But over 27 years, they’ve improved more than reading scores.

About 41% of fourth graders and 34% of eighth graders scored proficient in math in 2019. That’s not significantly different from 2017.

But since 1990, students at both grade levels have improved in math: Fourth graders this year scored 27 points higher on the 300-point exam compared with their peers in 1990. Eighth grade students posted an average score that was 19 points higher than in 1990.

Is there any good news?

Yes. Washington, D.C., students showed big gains in fourth grade reading and eighth grade math. In fact, D.C. Public Schools was the only large district to show test-score gains in three of the four assessments since 2017, Carr said. Mississippi was the only other state to improve in fourth grade reading since 2017.

Detroit’s public schools pulled out a win in fourth grade math: Students scored 6 points higher than in 2017.

Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input.

“Since ... 1992, there’s been no growth for the lowestperforming students in either fourth or eighth grade.” Peggy Carr National Center for Education Statistics