The learning gains weren’t as dramatic, but they were gains nonetheless.
These continued gains “may be one of the most important social policy achievements of the last half century that nobody knows about,” said Harvard’s Thomas Kane, one of the Scorecard’s authors. “Even with the racial gaps that were narrowing, we must return to that route.“
In short, much was right about America’s schools, making the decline that began in 2013 “seem surprising and strange,” the report said.
““Especially in reading, test scores were going down four to six years before the pandemic,” said Reardon. There was a strong decline outside of the pandemic.”
What might have caused the decline?
Scorecard theory for startups
Scorecard researchers offer two possible explanations for the beginning of the decline in school reading:
1. The end of test-based accountability: Remember the much-maligned federal education law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which took a tough-love approach with schools to improve student performance? The law, which was introduced in 2003, threatened a range of penalties, including school closures, if students’ test scores did not rise, but their standards were seen by many as not only unachievable but unattainable. In 2013, the Obama administration began issuing orders to exempt states from the effects of the law. According to Scorecard, 38 districts were granted relief in the 2012-13 school year. Eventually, Congress replaced NCLB with a new federal law that de-emphasized test-based accountability.
Around 2013, Kane says, “school districts learned that no one was looking over their shoulders in terms of student achievement.“
Although the Scorecard researchers did not draw a direct, causal connection between the decline in test-based accountability and student scores, it is clear that the national recession began at about the same time that schools recoiled from the punitive effects of NCLB.
2. Use of social media by students: Turns out, 2013 is once again marking a time of great growth for young people using social media. A Pew Research study found that in 2014-15, nearly 1 in 4 teenagers said they used the Internet “almost always.” By 2022, it was almost half of the youth.
The researchers also pointed to international test data showing that low-achieving students are the heaviest users of social media. Students who spend more time (7+ hours per day) on social media score lower than students who spend less time (1-3 hours). And this gap, between the best and the lowest performers, began to grow before the pandemic, not only in the US but also in many other countries.
The end of the learning recession?
The scorecard focuses on what has been happening in schools since the end of the pandemic, from 2022 until the spring of 2025. There are signs that the country’s recession may be reversing, albeit slowly.
Meanwhile, most of the states covered by this year’s Scorecard showed students making meaningful progress in math, with Washington DC coming in as the clear winner there. Only five states failed to gain in numbers: Georgia, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa.
However, learning is still a cause for concern. While DC, Louisiana, Maryland and five other states experienced meaningful improvement between 2022 and 2025, many states continued to stagnate or, like Florida, Arizona and Nebraska, continued to decline.
It’s also worth noting that, while schools are, on average, recovering in math and turning a corner in reading, the decline that began in 2013 has been so steep and long-lasting that only one state, Louisiana, has returned to 2019 performance levels in both subjects.
Neither situation has returned to 2013 levels, according to Reardon.
He adds: “It’s easy to be doom and gloom, but if you look at the period from the 1990s to 2013, we made tremendous gains. And we actually narrowed the achievement gaps between races. That means we can improve our schools in ways that improve equality of opportunity. We just weren’t doing it a decade ago.”
U-shaped restoration
The scorecard reveals something interesting for schools from 2022 to 2025: a U-shaped recovery. That is, low-poverty schools, and high-poverty schools, experienced similar gains in math and similar small losses in academic achievement. Meanwhile, middle-income schools, at the bottom of the U, improved slightly in both subjects.
Why? Another theory is that high-poverty districts have gotten more help from Congress in the form of COVID relief dollars — money they could use for interventions like tutoring and summer school. Counties with low poverty rates received less aid from the federal government but were in better financial shape. They were middle-income districts that needed more help but did not qualify for full federal support.
“If it wasn’t for the benefit of the pandemic,” Kane said, “we estimate that there would be no recovery on average in the counties with the highest poverty.”
The science of studying the outcome
There has been a key card in the effort to improve students’ reading skills: A movement among states to change their approach to teaching reading to young children by embracing the “science of reading.” As of March, Scorecard says, many states had passed new literacy laws, including doubling the importance of teaching phonics.
The Scorecard’s authors note that all seven states (plus DC) that saw reading gains between 2022 and 2025 posted comprehensive science literacy changes. Of the states that have not yet reached January 2024, not a single one has seen progress. The connection between these changes and improved outcomes is not necessarily causal, they caution, but there is an obvious link.
As most states struggle to achieve learning gains, one district-level success story highlighted by the Scorecard stands out: Baltimore City Public Schools. Despite the challenges posed by poverty — most of its students qualify for free or reduced-price meals — Baltimore students have been making remarkable academic gains.
Under CEO Sonja Brookins Santelises, the district has transformed its approach to literacy. It embraced the science of reading even before the pandemic and years before the national wave of state-based literacy legislation.
When Brookins Santelises took over in Baltimore in 2016, she says she quickly embraced district-wide literacy and its emphasis on phonics, as opposed to a whole-language approach, which teaches children to guess words using symbols taken from pictures of text.
“I remember collecting [district’s] literacy department. And I said, ‘If you want to do the whole language, there are other districts in Maryland that do the whole language, and you’re free to go there. We don’t do that in Baltimore City. I respect you, but you can’t stay here. I’ve been mad about it ever since.”
‘Start your brain!’
The benefits of these changes appear to be twofold. During the pandemic, the Scorecard shows that Baltimore schools lost more learning space than schools with similar poverty levels. Then in 2022, when those processes were firmly in place, the city’s reading scores began to rise, erasing pandemic-era losses and rising to 2017 levels.
Baltimore’s successful approach to teaching literacy was on full display on a recent May morning, in veteran teacher Kimberly Lowery’s classroom at Johnston Square Elementary. Lowery sits in front of a rainbow-colored reading carpet, running through a series of sound-based games that her preschoolers seem to really enjoy.
There was letter-sound bingo, guess-the-sound cards and a visit from a special spelling helper – a toy owl, named Echo, who sits at the end of a yardstick. If the children’s laughter and joy don’t indicate they’re learning, district data shows that, at the end of last year, three-quarters of Lowery’s students were reading at or above grade level.
Lowery told the kids to brush their brains and asked, “What are you super-duper?”
In unison, the children shouted, “Smart!”
“Yes he is,” replied Lowery.
