KVIG Informative

The nation’s most comprehensive measure of student learning shows fourth-grade math scores climbing back toward pre-pandemic levels — even as the federal office that produces the data has lost more than half its staff.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, found fourth-grade math scores rose 2 points nationally in 2024 compared with 2022, according to results released by the National Assessment Governing Board. Nearly 40% of fourth graders are now performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level in math.

Eighth-grade math held flat between 2022 and 2024 — a pause researchers called notable given that 2022 had marked an 8-point drop, the steepest on record for that grade and subject. No state or large urban district posted gains in eighth-grade math over the same period.

The gains at fourth grade were not evenly distributed. Progress was driven mainly by middle- and higher-performing students; scores for the lowest-performing students were flat, continuing a decade-long pattern of widening gaps between the strongest and weakest students nationwide.

A separate long-term trend assessment released in 2025 found 9-year-olds’ math scores rose 4 points compared with 2022, with the gains concentrated among lower performers at the 10th and 25th percentiles — a partial reversal of the pattern seen at fourth grade. Scores for 13-year-olds showed no significant change from 2023 and remained below 2020, pre-pandemic levels.

The tests measuring all of this now face their own uncertainty. Ahead of the September 2025 release covering eighth-grade science and 12th-grade math and reading, the Trump administration cut more than half the staff at the Institute of Education Sciences, the Education Department arm that processes NAEP data, and canceled roughly a dozen planned assessments through 2032 — about half of them for 12th graders.

NAEP is mandated by Congress and has run continuously since 1969, testing a representative national sample every two years in reading and math at fourth and eighth grade, and every four years at 12th grade. Officials at the National Center for Education Statistics have said they remain confident in the agency’s ability to meet upcoming testing deadlines despite the staffing cuts.

Five years after the pandemic disrupted American classrooms, the scoreboard is still running — for now. What it will be able to measure, and how reliably, is no longer a settled question separate from the scores themselves.