WASHINGTON — The nation's 9-year-olds posted gains in reading and math after years of decline, while 13-year-olds showed no measurable improvement, according to new results from a long-running national exam released Wednesday.
The findings come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress' long-term trend assessment, which has tracked reading and math performance by age, rather than grade, since the 1970s. More than 30,000 students took the pencil-and-paper tests between October 2024 and March 2025, the National Center for Education Statistics said.
Average reading and math scores for 9-year-olds rose compared with 2022, with improvement seen across performance levels, including among lower-scoring students. "I think this is an optimistic release," Matthew Soldner, acting commissioner of the center, told NPR.
The picture was different for 13-year-olds, whose scores showed no statistically significant change since the group was last tested in 2023 and remained below pre-pandemic levels from 2020. The National Assessment Governing Board said average reading performance for that age group was no higher than in 1971, when the exam was first given, and that scores in both subjects had fallen from a 2012 peak.
Officials linked the diverging results in part to the pandemic. The 9-year-olds tested were in preschool when COVID-19 emerged and largely avoided the most severe disruptions, while today's 13-year-olds were in early elementary grades during widespread school closures, according to NCES and reporting by NPR and Education Week.
"The lack of progress in 13-year-olds raises huge questions and ought to serve as a catalyst for change," Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the governing board, said at a briefing. She said the country needed to focus on the middle school years and that progress had been achieved before.
The report also noted a long-term decline in reading for fun. The share of 13-year-olds who said they read for enjoyment daily fell from 35% in 1984 to 14% in 2025, according to the results.
It is the first long-term trend report released since the Trump administration began reducing the U.S. Education Department in 2025, including cuts at the Institute of Education Sciences, the arm of the department that oversees the assessment.
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