Only 1 in 10 students nationwide attends a school district that has returned to pre-pandemic achievement levels in reading and math, according to a new study released today by the Center on Reinventing Public Education.
In its fifth annual The State of the American Student report, CRPE’s analysis cites poor attendance rates, low test scores and a lack of consistent state-level instruction policies that are evidence-based and enforceable.
“Things have been getting worse for a long while now,” said CRPE director Robin Lake. “And things have been getting much worse for equal opportunity: Performance gaps in every state have been increasing.”
The effects are measurable, the report says, with estimated lifetime earning declines for students nearing 9% in the states hardest-hit by pandemic learning loss vs. 2% for students in the least-affected states. An average Mississippi eighth grader is nearly two and a half years ahead of an average West Virginia eighth grader on demographically adjusted national test scores.
Only in Louisiana have both math and reading scores exceeded their 2019 levels.
Just 13 states have clear, specific goals for student learning that are easily accessible by parents and teachers, the Arizona State University-based research organization found: 11 have published no statewide goals for student learning at all while 14 have only a vague vision for student success.
“We think a clear goal is the first piece of a strategy — and without it there is no way to tell whether everything a state is doing is adding up to something coherent,” said research principal Chelsea Waite, who co-wrote the report with Lake. “It also makes it harder for anyone to hold the state to that goal or to its strategy.”
CRPE notes 43 states have passed science of reading laws and 18 have passed laws around effective math instruction, but far fewer have bolstered the infrastructure or accountability measures needed to make such plans a reality. The report notes, for example, that Maryland, Tennessee, Colorado, Indiana and Virginia have made strides in literacy and math, but that each has “room for growth” in establishing and implementing comprehensive policy.
The organization found, too, that change has been partisan, with red states adopting “a more comprehensive set of policies and enforcing them more aggressively.”
The National Council on Teacher Quality said only 12 states have “strong” policies ensuring teacher preparation programs teach the science of reading — and eight of those states are Republican-leaning.
“Red states are also moving faster in math: 13 of the 18 states with math laws are red,” CRPE found.
Democrat-led states appeared to shine in limited areas: Of the 17 states that allow mental health days as an excused absence from school, eight are blue and six are purple while only three are red. And, CRPE found, six out of 13 blue states have enacted at least one early learning bill, compared to four of 13 purple states and five of 24 red states.
When looking at eighth-grade math scores on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the partisan split among the highest- and lowest-ranking states is pretty consistent. Eight red or purple states are in the top 10 highest performing while two on that list are blue. In the bottom 10, seven are red or purple and three are blue.
Both parties are falling short of what’s needed, the organization concluded.
“How do red states reconcile aggressive instructional reform with support for private school choice markets that face almost no public accountability?” the report asks. “Can lower-performing red states reach top-tier outcomes without investing in the economic and health conditions that support children? How do blue states square ambitious rhetoric about academic improvement with a persistent unwillingness to require evidence-based instruction?”
Efforts in the area of career pathways are also being neglected and artificial intelligence guidance is sparse, CRPE found: Only a single state, Maryland, requires AI tools to be vetted for academic outcomes.
And no state’s attendance levels have bounced back to what they were prior to the COVID-19 school closures, according to their findings. There have, however, been significant efforts to combat chronic absenteeism in the years following the pandemic, with some states, like Alabama and Iowa, gaining ground.
But success in one area does not translate to others, the report notes.
“Utah has some of the most thoughtful state guidance on AI in the country, but no math law,” it states. “Washington is a recognized leader on career navigation policy, but its reading and math reforms are thin. States like Tennessee and Maryland are leading across multiple areas, but still have work to do in math, especially.”
Co-author Waite said states need to move forward with proven strategies.
“It’s not a good time to follow the party line,” she said. “It’s a good time to do what works. The stakes are high.”
She said that if states are committed to improving student performance in math and literacy — plus success out of high school — they should work toward four key goals: improving instruction in both subjects, linking K-12 education to career pathways and setting guidance and policies around AI.
But efforts are inconsistent across the country.
“We found that there is a high amount of variation in how states are pursuing these four policy areas,” Waite said. “Every state has some gaps across these areas and some states appear to barely be in the game.”
New York and South Dakota, the report found, are taking little visible policy action to improve student outcomes. Now is not the time for states to slouch, the group found: The Trump administration has been dismantling the U.S. Department of Education for more than a year, making state leadership even more important.
These issues remain as schools face other struggles, including declining enrollment, chronic absenteeism — some of which is driven by harsh immigration enforcement — and funding shortfalls.
And, while student performance across states had been converging for years, the variation between their average scores on NAEP’s eighth-grade math and reading tests has been widening since 2019.
CRPE does not know why this is happening, but worries that diverging state strategies, which they say are driven more by partisanship than sound evidence, will make inequality worse.
“States are making different bets, many along party lines — and with little shared efforts as to what is working,” Lake said. “In order to improve the state of the student nationally, states are going to have to begin to reconverge on what works.”
The organization notes that the nation, after the November election, will have a host of new governors and other elected officials who can advocate for what kids need most, including strong, coherent, evidence-driven academic strategies.
“American students are not okay,” the report states. “This is not a pandemic story, though the pandemic made everything worse. It is not a funding story, though money matters. And it is not a political story, though the politics of this moment are impossible to ignore. It is a human story about a generation of young people who have been let down by a system that keeps returning to normal when normal was never good enough.”