New student reading data offer bright spot on long road to literacy recovery in the US

Reading scores are starting to see an increase across the board after years of stagnation following COVID-19, a new study says, a hopeful sign in the long battle to improve literacy among U.S. students. 

Reading scores in grades K through 8 cut the gap from pre-pandemic levels by one-third in the past year, according to data from NWEA, an education research group.  While an encouraging sign that experts think can be attributed to some new reading policies implemented at the state level, more progress is needed before students get back to pre-COVID success rates. 

“The kind of improvements we saw from 2025 to 2026, so this last year in reading, really stood out because we had seen such stagnation for the four years previously. It seemed like schools were doing lots of things, schools were back in, kind of to normal, but we weren’t seeing that any kind of real road to recovery on average,” said Megan Kuhfeld, director of Growth Modeling and Analytics at NWEA. 

The scores “just kind of dropped and then stagnated. So, the fact that we saw these kind of small improvements, but still meaningful improvements over the last year, was really encouraging,” Kuhfeld added. 

Experts believe the improvements are a sign that efforts by states to implement the science of reading and add more literacy tutoring were not in vain.  

Since the pandemic, around half of states have adopted laws or requirements for schools to align their literacy teaching with the........

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