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Dive Brief:

• Reading scores for 13-year-olds have shown no significant improvement since 1971, a trend that comes alongside double-digit declines since 1984 in the share of both 9- and 13-year-old children who say they read for fun almost every day, according to a long-term federal assessment released June 10 as part of the Nation's Report Card.
• However, reading scores for 9-year-olds — who were just beginning elementary school when buildings reopened after COVID-19 — rose in 2025 compared to both 2022 and 1971. Scores were higher for this cohort both on average and among lower-performing students.
• For 13-year-olds — who were gaining foundational reading and math skills when the pandemic hit — the 2025 results revealed no measurable score changes compared to 2023, when the assessment was last conducted for this age group. And the cohort showed lower reading scores on average compared to 2020.

Dive Insight:

 The long-term assessment — which tracks reading and math performance by age rather than grade — offers a five-decade perspective on student learning in the U.S., having been first administered in 1971. The latest study, released by the National Center for Education Statistics, assessed some 15,000 9-year-olds and 16,000 13-year-olds between 2024 and 2025. It is part of the Nation's Report Card, but separate from the main National Assessment of Educational Progress. 

The average scores in 2025 for 9-year-olds were 4 points higher in reading and 4 points higher in math compared to 2022, the last time that age group was assessed. Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets the policies and standards for this and other federal assessments, attributed these reading gains partly to "a significant movement nationwide to focus on early literacy," including a focus among states on the science of reading. 

"We're seeing gains on average and for our lower-performing students in both reading and math compared to the last time we assessed students of this age," Matthew Soldner, acting director of the Institute of Education Sciences and acting commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics, told a June 8 press conference. "The story is very different for our nation's 13-year-olds." 

For that older group, scores did not change for either reading or math since they were last assessed in 2023. 

In fact, scores in 2025 dropped in both subjects compared to prepandemic scores in 2020.

The pandemic "complicated" 13-year-olds' experiences, Soldner said. "However, we can clearly see that this isn't just a pandemic story." 

Declines for that age group began in 2012 for both subjects, according to NCES data. National assessment leaders did not provide an explanation as to why scores have been stagnant or declining. 

Last month, a separate study published by research centers at Harvard and Stanford universities suggested that the drop in academic achievement in the wake of COVID-19 was part of a learning recession that began in 2013. That means the decline predated the pandemic and coincided with a dismantling of test-based accountability and a rise in social media use, the researchers said.

"The lack of progress among 13-year-olds raises huge questions and ought to serve as a catalyst for change," said Muldoon, noting that students who took the long-term assessment as 13-year-olds are now in high school. "We won't have them for much longer." 

Results from the Nation's Report Card in 2025 showed that high schoolers were graduating with weaker reading skills, with nearly a third of 12th graders scoring below basic level in reading. . 

Meanwhile, as reading performance for 13-year-olds shows no growth and 9-year-olds' performance fluctuates compared to when the long-term assessment first began tracking their performance over five decades ago, the percentage of both groups saying they read for fun on a daily basis continues to decline.

Some 37% of 9-year-old students reported reading for fun almost every day in 2025, down from 42% in 2020 and 53% in 1984. For 13-year-olds, the percentage is even lower: Only 14% percent reported reading for fun almost every day last year, compared to 17% in 2020 and 35% in 1984. 

"It's important to remember correlation is not causation," Soldner said. "But student experiences are at the very least context for trends we observe." 

Students, meanwhile, may also be reading few full books in the classroom. Nationally representative data released by the Rand Corp. last month showed that most middle and high school English language arts teachers — 90% — assigned at least one full book to students in the 2024-25 school year.

However, teachers serving historically marginalized students — such as students of color, those experiencing poverty, students with disabilities and multilingual learners — assigned fewer full books, according to the data.