The nation’s report card is in for 2024, and the results aren’t pretty. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that far too many U.S. students are struggling with reading—and that on average, student learning has not bounced back since Covid.
If you’re a parent, it’s worth understanding these scores and what they do—and don’t—tell you. Specifically: What do these numbers actually mean? How do they affect your child? And what can we all do about them?
Here are five things you need to know about the 2024 U.S. reading scores. At the end, I’ll share three action steps all parents should take now.
1. The NAEP Test Offers a National Snapshot of Reading Achievement
The NAEP scores are often called “The Nation’s Report Card.” The assessment is a federally administered test that measures reading and math skills among U.S. students every two years. It’s not a high-stakes test—individual student scores aren’t reported, and participation is voluntary. But it provides critical insights into overall student performance across the country.
The 2024 results are alarming:
- National reading scores remain below pre-pandemic levels across all tested grades.
- Fourth- and eighth-grade scores dropped by two points from 2022.
- Less than a third of students nationwide can read grade-level texts with understanding.
- One-third of eighth graders scored “below basic” on reading skills—the greatest percentage to date. This means they struggle to identify main ideas or sequence events in a passage—skills critical for high school success.
NAEP scores fall into four categories:
- Below Basic: Struggling to recognize words, comprehend simple texts.
- Basic: Can read simple texts but struggle with deeper comprehension.
- Proficient: Can read and understand grade-level materials.
- Advanced: Highly skilled readers with strong comprehension and analysis.
The fact that so many students fall into the “below basic” category is a national crisis.
2. If Your Child Is Selected to Take NAEP, It Matters
The testers randomly assign students to take the NAEP test. The goal is to test a small, nationally representative group of students. Participation is voluntary, but the accuracy of the results depends on enough students participating.
No one will see your child’s individual test results or questionnaire responses—not you, your child, or their teacher. But they still matter, a lot. The results provide insight into how students in your district and state compare nationally. They also inform educational policy and resource allocation at the state and national levels.
But, keep in mind: NAEP scores don’t just reflect what happens at your child’s school and other local schools. Many external factors also play a role. Things like parents’ education levels, reading and literacy practices at home, outside tutoring, and the experiences kids have that build their vocabularies all affect reading performance, not just classroom instruction.
3. NAEP Is the Only Apples-to-Apples Comparison Across States
Each state sets its own standards for what qualifies as “proficient” on state reading tests, which means results vary widely. NAEP provides the only national benchmark.
For example:
- In Wisconsin, recent state tests showed 51% of fourth graders were proficient in reading.
- But NAEP told a different story. Only about 30% were deemed proficient by that nationally standardized measure.
This discrepancy happens because there are significant variations in the content of state assessments. States can set the bar as low or high as they want. As a parent, it’s important to look at all the data that’s available to you to really understand where your state, and more importantly, your child stand.
Want to see NAEP results for your state? Visit nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/ to see results, sample test questions, and more.
4. Covid Learning Loss Lingers—But Gaps Were Widening Before
The 2024 NAEP results confirm what many educators feared: Learning hasn’t recovered from school and home disruptions during the pandemic.
The biggest declines were among the lowest-performing students—those who were already struggling before Covid-19 hit.
At the same time, many higher-performing students have shown improvement relative to students tested in past years. The top 25% of eighth graders tested in 2024 actually scored higher than the top 25% of eighth graders tested previously.
The result? The reading gap is growing. In 2024, the difference in reading between the lowest- and highest-performing students widened to 100 points on NAEP’s 500-point scale. This reading skill gap has been increasing for over a decade.
This is sometimes called the Matthew Effect: The (literacy) rich get richer, and the (literacy) poor get poorer.
5. Demographics Aren’t Destiny—But Support Matters
NAEP scores show disparities by race and income level—but they don’t prove that certain students are doomed to struggle.
Instead, they highlight opportunities for action. These gaps signal a lack of early literacy support and systemic interventions long before children start school.
Kids from lower-income backgrounds often have fewer books at home, less exposure to rich vocabulary in their daily lives, and less access to high-quality early education. All of this contributes to the gap, but they aren’t inevitable. And all of it can be changed for individual children, and—with collective action—for all children.
Too many kids are struggling to read—and the gap is widening.
But reading outcomes aren’t set in stone. With family literacy practices, early intervention, high-quality instruction, and strong literacy advocacy, we can change the story.
Your voice matters. Let’s push for the resources and policies all our children need to thrive.
What Should Parents Do?
- Look at your state’s NAEP results and compare them to state test scores.
- Advocate for better reading instruction. Demand robust teacher training in structured phonics instruction and vocabulary building as well as intensive, high-quality tutoring for struggling readers in your district if they aren’t available already.
- Support literacy at home—early and often. Daily reading, talking, and writing activities make a big difference. See my book Reading for Our Lives for practical tips.
