Some might claim educational technology is to blame for declining U.S. student capabilities in math and reading. That probably is not the most-common explanation, however.
U.S. student performance in reading and mathematics has been tracked primarily through the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Overall, scores showed steady improvements from the 1970s through the early 2010s, peaking around 2013.
Since then, performance has stagnated or declined, with sharp drops during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2022) due to school disruptions. Test scores indicate high school scores for the 2024 graduating classes have dropped.
Many reasons have been advanced, but some might point to a couple of decades of declining scores.
Post-pandemic recovery has been uneven: math has shown slight rebounds in some grades, while reading continues to decline.
These trends are more pronounced among lower-performing students, widening achievement gaps. By 2024–2025, 12th-grade scores reached historic lows, with reading 10 points below 1992 levels and math at its lowest since 2005.
But there may be lots of other cumulative reasons, including social promotion (advancing students to the next grade despite inadequate performance to maintain age-appropriate grouping) and efforts to avoid stigmatizing learners (through reduced retention or labeling to prevent emotional harm), may contribute to declining academic achievement in U.S. students.
These practices are often adopted to mitigate short-term social-emotional risks like low self-esteem or dropout likelihood from grade retention, but research suggests they can exacerbate long-term performance issues by allowing students to advance without mastering foundational skills, leading to compounded learning gaps, disengagement, and lower scores on assessments like NAEP.
This is particularly evident among lower-performing students, where declines have been steepest since the early 2010s. It’s complicated.
