Average reading and math scores for 9-year-olds increased between 2022 and 2025, but 13-year-olds showed no meaningful improvement since 2023, according to new results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Long-Term Trend assessments released this week by the Center of the American Experiment. The data paints two very different pictures of academic recovery from COVID-19 disruptions, with younger students making gains while teenagers remain stuck well below pre-pandemic performance levels.

For 9-year-olds, the news is cautiously positive. Both reading and math scores climbed between 2022 and 2025, with lower performers largely driving the gains. Compared to pre-COVID results from 2020, the average reading score showed no significant difference, but math scores remain lower than they were before the pandemic. Performance among this age group has jumped considerably since the 1970s when these paper-based tests were first administered, though 2025 scores still fall below the 2012 peak. The situation for 13-year-olds is far bleaker. Reading and math performance hasn't moved meaningfully since 2023, and compared to 2020, both subjects are still down. Reading performance sits at roughly the same level as the 1970s, while math is only slightly higher. Like their younger counterparts, 13-year-olds' 2025 average scores are well below their 2012 highs.

The stagnation among older students wasn't entirely surprising to education officials. Kirsten Baesler, assistant secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, noted that today's 13-year-olds were in second and third grade when COVID shut schools down. "They were in some of their most formative years of both literacy and numeracy, and it was a seismic event," Baesler told The 74. "It's going to take equally seismic effort to ensure that those students are coming back to where they need to be."

But the troubling trends started long before the pandemic. Both age groups saw test scores peak in 2012, and scores have generally moved in the wrong direction since then. The report points to research from Stanford, Harvard, and Dartmouth that documented the same decline in other achievement data and identified two changes that happened around the same time: "policymakers switched off the early warning system of test-based accountability and social media took over children's lives." Starting in 2013, the Obama administration began granting states waivers from key provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, and Congress replaced it in 2015 with the Every Student Succeeds Act, which eased federal accountability requirements. While No Child Left Behind was controversial, the years it was in force coincided with sustained score increases, especially among the lowest-performing students. At the same time social media exploded among teenagers, with the share who reported being online almost constantly nearly doubling from about 25 percent in 2014-15 to close to 50 percent by 2022, according to Pew Research. Based on international test data, the largest academic declines have been concentrated among lower-achieving students, who also tend to spend the most time on social media.

The modest gains among 9-year-olds on the 2025 assessments offer some encouragement, but the report warns they shouldn't distract from what the 13-year-old results reveal. Dozens of states have already passed or considered laws restricting teen social media use and phone use in schools in response to growing concerns about screen time. If policymakers want to reverse the decade-long decline, the report suggests they might start by looking at what was abandoned when scores were still going up.