The Nation’s Report Card is sparking calls to action as dismal scores on reading and math show students across the country have failed to academically recover from the pandemic.

Data released Wednesday in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as the Nation's Report Card, showed reading scores have fallen even further for fourth and eighth graders than they did in 2022, while math scores show only slight progress for fourth graders but still not enough to catch up to prepandemic numbers.

“These results are both heartbreaking and tragic,” said Alicia Levi, president and CEO of Reading is Fundamental. “We need to take action. ... We are calling on, leaders from all sectors, public and private, to join us in this fight.”

Increasing investment, preparing educators with new ways to teach subjects and acknowledging students are moving up grades without the fundamentals are all crucial for fixing the problems, according to experts.

Reading scores took the biggest hit, with the percentage of eighth graders able to read at NAEP’s basic line at the lowest in the assessment’s history.

The news is even worse for the lowest-performing students: Those in just the 10th and 25th percentiles for both fourth and eighth grade had the lowest scores since NAEP’s first reading assessment in 1992.

Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, president of Mrs. Wordsmith, a group that seeks to improve children’s literacy outcomes, called it "a state of........

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