Students’ reading test scores have been on the decline since the mid-2010s, and the pandemic made recovery that much more difficult. The proliferations of screens, student absenteeism and a push away from phonics-based teaching are likely contributors to the reduction in scores.
Background
U.S. test scores have been suffering for over a decade. The U.S. entered a “learning recession” in 2013 as “student progress in math and reading stalled and began to decline,” said Education Scorecard. From 2017 to 2019, “students lost as much ground in reading as they did during the pandemic, and reading scores continued to fall at a similar rate through 2024,” said The New York Times. Reading scores were “down last year in 83% of school districts where data was available,” while “math scores were down in 70%,” compared to a decade ago. The declines have “affected both rich and poor districts, and crossed racial and geographic divides.”
The reduced scores “coincided with a dismantling of test-based accountability in schools and a dramatic rise in social media use among young people,” said Education Scorecard. While it “remains unclear whether and how much each factor caused the decline in scores, both are likely candidates.” The shift is an “enormous problem that’s not getting enough attention,” Nat Malkus, a senior fellow studying education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, said to the Times.
The latest
Reading has been a particular area of difficulty as students are in a “reading recession” that has yet to adjust after the pandemic. “Scores inched upward in reading last year and have climbed more steadily in math since 2022,” said the Times. But, “it has been nowhere near enough to make up for lost ground.” Only “five states plus the District of Columbia had meaningful growth in reading test scores from 2022 to 2025,” said The Associated Press. Nationally, “students remain nearly half a grade level behind prepandemic reading scores and only slightly better in math.”
The country has also seen a U-shaped recovery, which “suggests the middle has been left behind,” said Education Scorecard. There have been “larger improvements among the highest-income and the lowest-income school districts in the country,” while “middle-income districts (those with between 30% and 70% of students receiving federally subsidized lunches) have seen the least improvement on average.” The pandemic “was the mudslide that had followed seven years of steady erosion in achievement,” Thomas Kane, a Harvard professor who helped create the Education Scorecard, said to the AP.
The reaction
A variety of factors have reduced reading capabilities in students. For years, “schools taught reading using approaches that de-emphasized phonics and encouraged strategies such as guessing words based on context clues,” said the AP. In addition, the pandemic “accelerated learning declines, especially for the poorest students,” and to this day, student absenteeism “remains higher than prepandemic,” said the Times.
Over the past decade, screen time has increased exponentially. “There’s no question that swiping has decreased students’ focus and persistence, and time on devices has displaced time spent reading or studying,” said the Times. “Far more teenagers — nearly one in three — now say they ‘never or hardly ever’ read for fun.” The good news is that “some states and school districts are making progress,” said the AP. A “common factor was a shift toward phonics-based instruction and providing extra support in other ways as well for struggling readers.”
The decline predates the pandemic
