U.S. students' "reading recession" continuing but some places bucking the trend

U.S. U.S. students' "reading recession" continuing but some places bucking the trend May 13, 2026 / 7:43 AM EDT / CBS/AP Add CBS News on Google Modesto, Calif. — Before every important test, teacher Nancy Barajas dims the lights, turns on a disco ball and blasts music from her playlist. Her sixth graders dance together as a "pre-celebration" to boost their confidence, then take their exam.Lately, there's been a lot to celebrate in elementary schools in Modesto, California. Both reading and math scores have increased consistently over the past several years. But across the country, results are gloomier. Researchers warn that the U.S. is experiencing a reading recession - a slide predating the pandemic's disruptions to schooling. Scholars at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth analyzed state test scores from third to eighth grades from over 5,000 school districts in 38 states, enabling comparisons across school districts and states in a national Education Scorecard. What they found was sobering: Only five states and the District of Columbia had meaningful growth in reading test scores from 2022 to 2025. Nationally, students remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading scores and only slightly better in math. While schools have focused on catching kids up since the COVID-19 pandemic upended education, reading test scores have been falling since 2013 for eighth graders and 2015 for fourth graders, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. "The pandemic was the mudslide that had followed seven years of steady erosion in achievement," said Thomas Kane, a Harvard professor who helped create the Education Scorecard. "The 'learning recession' started a decade ago, after policymakers switched off the early warning system of test-based accountability and social media took over children's lives. In this report, we highlight the work of a small group of state leaders who have started digging out by changing how students learn to read, and 10...