Missouri students’ reading skills dipped again as part of a decade-long slide that preceded the COVID-19 pandemic.
The latest results from the National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP, show most states’ fourth- and eighth-graders haven’t seen their reading and math scores change significantly since the test was last administered in 2022.
Most states’ scores still lag behind their pre-pandemic numbers in 2019.
“Where there are signs of recovery, they are mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performing students," said NCES Commissioner Peggy G. Carr. “Lower-performing students are struggling, especially in reading.”
This year’s test is the first look at how students in kindergarten when the pandemic began are recovering academically. The scores show improvement in some areas, but the gap widened between high-performing students and those already struggling.
“Higher-performing students are bouncing back a little bit faster, and lower performing students were hit a little bit harder by — not just necessarily COVID, but all these other things that may have happened due to the COVID,” said Jeremy Ellis, Missouri’s NAEP State Coordinator.
What to understand about the “Nation’s Report Card”
Schools administer the NAEP test, also known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” to more than 400,000 students across the country every two years from January to March. The test looks at how well students performed in reading and mathematics.
Traditional public, charter and some private schools participate in the tests.
According to Missouri’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, about 1,800 students were tested in each of the categories in 2024. Nearly 860,000 students attend public school in Missouri.
The Missouri Measures of Academic Performance, or MAP, tests are taken by third- through eighth-graders, compared to just those in fourth and eighth grade for the national exam.
Ellis said the test helps clarify education trends over time, but isn’t as useful for individual scores. He said it’s also the only large-scale assessment that compares states to each other.
“We're just sampling a group of students,” Ellis said. “We're not seeing all of them, and we're just getting a look at how the health of the education system is at that point in time.”
NAEP and MAP also define achievement levels differently. Ellis said NAEP’s achievement levels are rigorous and require a high level of reading and mathematics comprehension to score proficient or advanced.
A student scoring proficient on the NAEP isn’t the same as a student being on grade level.
Courtney Vahle, director of operations at St. Louis University’s PRiME Center, said the NAEP scores should be taken into consideration alongside local data.
“I think it's important to just take the entire picture,” Vahle said. “For parents, I urge you to get that individualized student level data — about your own student, your own school, your own district — and make decisions based off of that.”
Continuing declines in reading scores
In Missouri, 27% of fourth grade students and 26% of eighth grade students scored proficient and above, which means they have mastered essential reading skills. That’s down from more than 33% in 2019.
A proficient NAEP score is the gold standard, and means students in fourth grade can understand the meaning of words and sentences and give a timeline of events from what they’ve read.
Scoring proficient in eighth grade means a student can draw conclusions from the material they’re reading and pull examples from the text to make an argument.
Reading scores nationwide declined similarly: 30% of fourth-graders and 29% of eighth-graders across the country are proficient or above.
Ellis said students’ first years of school focus heavily on literacy, and those scores could take longer to recover than math because the pandemic disrupted the early building blocks.
In 2022, Missouri passed legislation mandating training for all teachers on the evidence-based science of reading, which includes phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.
National and state leaders warned that the 2024 NAEP scores do not mean evidence-based instruction isn’t working.
Lisa Sireno, assistant commissioner in the Office of Quality Schools at the state's department of education, said states that have implemented similar programs have seen evidence of improved literacy over an eight to 10 year period.
“It's kind of a marathon, not a sprint,” Sireno said. “We want to see long term, consistent implementation in the districts, in classrooms, in school buildings, before we can see that sort of systemic change.”
Racial disparities also persist for math and reading scores. This year, NAEP also looked at how socioeconomic status impacts student performance.
In fourth grade reading, Black students in Missouri scored 32 points lower than white students. Hispanic students scored 18 points lower. Economically disadvantaged students scored 29 points lower than their peers who were not disadvantaged.
Missouri created a Reading Success Program to help close the gap for lower-performing students. Students identified as at risk of not being able to read on grade level are required to have a reading success plan so teachers can focus on the skills a specific student needs to learn.
Some modest progress
Missouri’s fourth graders saw their math scores improve by three points since the 2022 test, reflecting a nationwide improvement after math scores hit historic lows. They did not do as well as on the 2019 test.
About 36% of fourth grade students in 2024 scored at the proficient level.
School attendance is another bright spot from this year’s report.
NAEP has asked students since 2019 to self-report how many of the previous 30 school days they missed. Students reported missing less school in 2024 than in 2022.
State data released in the fall found 78.2% of Missouri students are showing up to school about 90% of the time. State officials said students that are in the below basic range on the Missouri Assessment Program tests have the lowest attendance rates.
The NAEP data similarly shows that lower-performing students were more likely to report missing more school than higher-performing students.
“We’re not back to where they were in 2019,” Carr said. ”This wouldn’t be so worrisome if we had not found a consistent and strong correlation between absenteeism and student performance. You have to come to school to learn.”
School districts in Missouri used the millions of dollars in federal pandemic aid to not only bolster learning, but to boost attendance.
