Decline of student test scores

Time - Over the past ten-plus years, American students’ academic achievement has experienced a concerning decline. Test scores for students in grades K through 12 are lower than they were a decade ago in school districts across the U.S., according to new data released Wednesday by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University.

Reading scores were down roughly 0.6 grades in 2025 compared to 2015, and math scores were down about 0.4 grades. This means that students were 60% of one school year behind where their peers were in reading a decade earlier and 40% of one school year behind in math.

The decline began even before 2015, according to a report on the data from the Education Scorecard, a collaboration between the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard University and the Stanford project. From 1990 to 2013, students’ math and reading scores rose steadily. But in 2013, per the report, the U.S. “entered a learning recession” and the rate of improvement in reading and math began to flatten or drop, a trend that continued through the COVID-19 pandemic.