2025 – Almost everywhere in America, students are performing worse than their peers were 10 years ago.

Compared with a decade earlier, reading scores were down last year in 83 percent of school districts where data was available. Math scores were down in 70 percent. The declines have affected both rich and poor districts, and crossed racial and geographic divides.

Students’ test scores had been increasing since 1990 — then abruptly stopped in the mid-2010s. That coincided with two events: an easing of federal school accountability under No Child Left Behind, which was replaced in 2015, and the rise of smartphones, social media and personalized school laptops.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/upshot/test-scores-school-districts-us.html

[https://educationscorecard.org/expert-insights/]