Federal education officials painted a grim picture of student achievement Tuesday, releasing test scores that in some grades have fallen to their lowest level in decades.
Connecticut’s students outperformed the nation in a standard measure comparing academic achievement across the United States known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” but state officials said there is still cause for concern about the future.
The National Center for Education Statistics’ National Assessment of Educational Progress results show the state’s fourth grade students outperformed their peers in reading and scored on par in mathematics compared with national averages, the CSDE reported. And Connecticut’s eighth grade students outperformed the nation in both subjects, according to data from CSDE.
Overall at the national level, the results illustrate a troubling trend. The Nation’s Report Card showed that 12th graders’ scores dropped to their lowest levels in more than two decades. Eighth-grade students also lost significant ground in science skills, according to the NAEP results.
While expressing optimism about the results in the state, several local education officials said they are concerned about maintaining funding for education as staffing and budget cuts have occurred in municipalities and they await the impact federal cuts to Medicaid may have on state budgets. Funding education, they argue, is critical to improvements in student achievement including the Nation’s Report Card.
Further, the Trump administration’s renewed commitment to return control of education to the states is another worry some educators note as they expect significant cuts to education after the 2026 elections.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that “despite spending billions annually on numerous K-12 programs, the achievement gap is widening and more high school seniors are performing below the basic benchmark in math and reading than ever before.
“The lesson is clear,” she continued. “Success isn’t about how much money we spend, but who controls the money and where that money is invested. That’s why President Trump and I are committed to returning control of education to the states so they can innovate and meet each school and students’ unique needs.”
But Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, said “It is not about returning anything to the states other than the bill.”
“What we have always had is the authority to innovate,” Dias said. “What we won’t have is the resources to innovate. They are not interested in providing support for students in rural communities or children who come from poverty or providing support for students new to this country. They are not interested in providing support for students with disabilities.”
NAEP results
While most Connecticut students surpassed the national achievement average, state students from economically disadvantaged families in fourth grade performed below the national average in both reading and math, according to the CSDE.
Further, English Language Learners and multilingual students performed below the national average in math in both grades and in eighth grade reading.
This concerns Patrice McCarthy, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education.
“We know there are gaps in academic achievement between English Language Learners and other students and students who are growing up in poverty,” she said. “It is not uniform and it is something the districts continue to grapple with.”
Compared to 2022, the state’s fourth and eighth grade students performed at the same level. By contrast, nationally fourth and eighth-grade reading performance declined.
“Scores for our lowest-performing students are at historic lows,” said Matthew Soldner, the acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. “These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted and focused action to accelerate student learning.”
Connecticut Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker previously said in a statement that while the nation experienced a decline in reading performance, she was thankful that the state “was able to maintain its level of performance with a new cohort of students.”
Tucker made her remarks when the state released its results this past January.
“By continuing to invest in evidence-based strategies and implementing them at scale and with fidelity, we will not only recover but surpass pre-pandemic levels of student engagement and achievement,” Tucker said.
While the pandemic had an outsized impact on student achievement, experts said falling scores are part of a longer arc in education that cannot be attributed solely to COVID-19, school closures and related issues such as heightened absenteeism. Educators said nationally potential underlying factors include children’s increased screen time, shortened attention spans and a decline in reading longer-form writing both in and out of school.
The test scores show more students are not reaching what would be considered “basic” achievement across subject areas, said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board. While NAEP’s definition of “proficient” is a high bar, Muldoon said, it is not an unreasonable one, and it is based on what researchers believe students should be able to achieve by the end of high school.
In reading, the average score in 2024 was the lowest score in the history of the assessment, which began in 1992. Thirty-two percent of high school seniors scored below “basic,” meaning they were not able to find details in a text to help them understand its meaning.
Last year, 39% of the nation’s fourth grade students performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level on the mathematics assessment, which was 3 percentage points higher compared to 2022 and 2 percentage points lower than in 2019, according to NAEP.
By comparison, in Connecticut 42% of fourth graders performed at or above the NAEP proficient level on the mathematics assessment.
And in reading, 31% of fourth grade students nationally performed at or above the NAEP proficient level on the reading assessment, compared to 36% in Connecticut.
Dias said the efforts educators have made in the past few years have really paid off with focusing on the needs of the students.
“Teachers have done a lot of work to edit their curriculums to make sure they are matching their students’ needs,” she said. “Some of that is the reflection of the influx of resources that went into the classroom. We saw a significant investment post pandemic. Those investments particularly when we are able to do things like drive class sizes down, increase paraprofessional support and really hone in on the needs of our students specifically really allowed us to produce some positive results.
Dias continued: “I am always going to say that test scores are not the end all, be all. They don’t tell the whole story but I do think what they tell us is that investing in the resources that support our children in the classroom does improve student outcomes.”
She said investment in education has also been key in improvements in student outcomes.
But Dias said she is concerned about the reductions in staffing and paraprofessionals in municipalities and ensuring that education investments at the state level are keeping pace with simple inflationary costs. She added that the state should look at how the Education Cost Sharing grant formula is allocated.
McCarthy also expressed concerns about funding for education, saying that funding to extend learning opportunities in the summer months and resources available to students has been critical to helping improve student achievement.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
