Math and reading scores among America’s 13-year-olds fell to their lowest levels in decades, with math scores plunging by the largest margin ever recorded, according to the results of a federal test known as the Nation’s Report Card. The results are the latest measure of deep learning setbacks in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. Still, superintendents from several school districts in the region say scores on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment are climbing and that the return to in-school instruction has been key. In the national sample of 13-year-old students, average math scores fell by 9 points between 2020 and 2023, and reading scores fell by 4 points in the same time frame. The National Assessment of Educational Progress was administered from October to December last year to 8,700 students across the country in each subject. Math and reading scores had been sliding before the pandemic, but the latest results show a large drop that erases earlier gains in the years leading up to 2012. Scores on the math exam, which has been given since 1973, are at their lowest levels since 1990. Reading scores are their lowest since 2004.

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