Nation’s Report Card results are in and they’re ‘not good.’ How are NC students doing?
North Carolina students are still performing below pre-pandemic levels on national reading and math tests and have made little progress on those exams in the last two years, according to new data.
Results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, released on Wednesday show reading and math scores for North Carolina’s fourth- and eighth-grade students have not seen significant change since they plummeted in 2022.
The picture was also bleak nationally, with reading scores continuing to drop and only slight improvement in fourth-grade math since 2022.
“The Nation’s Report Card is out, and it is not good,” Peggy Carr, commissioner of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center For Education Statistics, said during a media briefing on Tuesday.
“We’re not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground our students lost during the pandemic, and where we are seeing signs of recovery, they’re mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performance students. Lower performing students are struggling, especially in reading.”
The NAEP tests are given every two years to randomly chosen students to track the nation’s academic progress over time. Between January and March 2024, 235,000 fourth-graders and 230,000 eighth-graders across the nation took the NAEP exams.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Guilford County are the only two North Carolina school districts with enough data to report district results. Both are part of a group of 26 urban districts that take the tests to show district performance over time.
The results can be viewed at www.nationsreportcard.gov.
’Reading skills continue to slide’
The NAEP results from 2022 showed historic declines in academic performance both statewide and nationally. Hopes the 2024 results would show signs of post-pandemic recovery were dashed
“These 2024 results clearly show that students are not where they need to be or where we want them to be,” Carr said. “Our students, for the most part, continue to perform below pre-pandemic levels, and our children’s reading skills continue to slide.”
Reading scores dropped two points nationally in both grades four and eight. It continues a trend in the drop in reading scores that began in 2019 before the pandemic.
The students who took the NAEP exams last year were in kindergarten and fourth grade in March 2020 when the school year ended due to COVID concerns. Those students had all or mostly remote instruction the following school year.
“This is a major concern, a concern that cannot be blamed solely on the pandemic,” Carr said. “This is not just a pandemic story. Our nation is facing complex challenges in reading.”
’Widening achievement gap’
The National Assessment Governing Board groups NAEP scores into three achievement levels: Basic, Proficient and Advanced.
In 2024, a third of eighth-graders nationally scored below NAEP Basic in reading, which was the largest in the assessment’s history. Around 40% of fourth-graders scored below NAEP Basic, which was the worst result in 20 years.
Even though fourth-grade math scores did go up, they’re still below pre-pandemic levels.
“Reading scores continue to decline, and our lowest performing students are reading at historically low levels,” Carr said. “Math performance has increased, but only among fourth graders and higher performing eighth graders.
“There’s a widening achievement gap in this country, and it has worsened since the pandemic, especially for grade eight. We all need to come together as partners to catch these students up and improve achievement.
A possible reason for the lower scores, Carr said, is that chronic student absenteeism remains higher than pre-pandemic levels. Students are considered chronically absent if they miss more than 10% of school days during a school year.
“The data are clear,” Carr said. “Students who don’t come to school are not improving.”
But Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, said there’s hope.
“In some prior periods, we’ve seen progress as a nation, within states and within districts,” Muldoon said. “Progress was possible before, and it is possible again.”
No significant change in NC scores
The new NAEP results offered a chance to see what North Carolina has done since the 2022 scores came in at the lowest levels in more than 20 years. But Carr said Tuesday that most jurisdictions are not at or near where they were before the pandemic.
The state’s average math score went up three points in fourth grade and two points in eighth grade from 2022. The state’s average reading score dropped three points in fourth grade and one point in eighth grade.
The NAEP results list North Carolina’s 2024 score changes as not being significantly different from 2022. But NAEP says the state’s 4th-grade math score is now not statistically different than it was in 2019.
State Superintendent Mo Green pointed Wednesday to the lingering impact of the pandemic on North Carolina’s students. But Green, who was elected in November, said reading scores should improve in time now that all of the state’s elementary school teachers have completed training in the LETRS science of reading training.
“These students had their learning disrupted during a critical time in their early education,” Green said in a news release. “While it is always disappointing to see a lack of progress, the NAEP data tracks with trends we’re seeing in state-level end-of-grade testing.
“The widening achievement gap between our highest performing students and those with greater needs adds another layer of urgency to the work my team and I will be doing over the next four years to inspire excellence in our public schools.”
Green said the state results will be presented at February’s State Board of Education meeting.
The NAEP results come as state test results show schools are recovering but still remain below pre-pandemic levels.
Last school year, 54.2% of students passed state exams. That’s up from 53.6% passing in the 2022-23 school year but still well below the 58.8% mark from the 2018-19 school year.
Recovery has been slower in the state’s middle schools.
A state report showed negative post-pandemic achievement trends in reading for grades 7 and 8. The report also showed concerning trends in math for grades 7 and 8.
State education leaders have repeatedly said it will take time to fully recover from pandemic learning loss.
How many NC students are proficient?
The new NAEP results will also likely revive the arguments over how well students are doing in North Carolina.
For years, some politicians have said schools are failing because most students don’t achieve a NAEP Proficient rating.
The percentage of North Carolina fourth-grade students scoring at or above NAEP Proficient was 30% in reading and 41% in math. The percentage of North Carolina eighth-grade students scoring at or above NAEP Proficient was 27% in reading and 31% in math.
But Carr said that the NAEP achievement levels are meant to be challenging. She said the NAEP Basic level is closer to the proficiency/grade level standards set by most states on their exams.
“The Basic level, as defined by the Governing Board who’s with us today, is partial mastery of fundamental skills needed to be proficient,” Carr said “So Basic isn’t nothing.”
The percentage of North Carolina fourth-grade students scoring at or above the Basic level was 58% in reading and 77% in math. The percentage of North Carolina eighth-grade students scoring at or above the Basic level was 65% in reading and 62% in math.
Tammy Howard, senior director of accountability and testing for the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, said it’s important to note that NAEP Proficient is not the same as grade-level proficiency on North Carolina’s end-of-grade or end-of-course tests.
“NAEP and end of-grade tests have different definitions for ‘proficient,’” Howard said in a news release. “NAEP Proficient and Advanced are similar to Levels 4 and 5 on the EOG in that they both signify solid and superior academic performance.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
