Learning losses began before COVID, some states are finally recovering

Student achievement did not collapse with COVID-19. By the time the pandemic hit, reading scores were already falling, and long-term NAEP results show 9-year-olds lost 5 points in reading and 7 points in math between 2020 and 2022.

That decline marked more than a temporary setback. The National Center for Education Statistics said the 2022 reading drop was the largest since 1990, while the math decline was the first ever on that long-term trend measure. In January 2025, the National Assessment Governing Board said U.S. reading scores had already begun sliding before the pandemic, underscoring that schools were entering the crisis from a weakened position.

The latest Education Recovery Scorecard, which tracks achievement in 8,719 school districts across 43 states, shows how uneven the rebound has been. No state improved in both reading and math overall, but more than 100 districts were back above pre-pandemic levels in both subjects. The average U.S. student remained nearly half a grade level behind in reading and math, and students in the highest-income districts were far more likely to recover than those in the lowest-income districts.

Louisiana emerged as one of the clearest bright spots. The state ranked first in reading recovery and second in math recovery on the 2025 Scorecard, and the Louisiana Department of Education said it was the only state where the average student had fully recovered. Officials linked part of that progress to targeted uses of federal pandemic aid, including summer learning and tutoring. Even so, the department said chronic absenteeism was slowing progress in many districts, a reminder that recovery has depended not just on academic fixes, but on getting children back in class.

The District of Columbia also stood out. It ranked first among states in recovery from 2022 to 2024 in both reading and math, even though scores remained below 2019 levels. D.C. students had regained about half of the learning lost during the pandemic. Chronic absenteeism in the city rose from 30 percent in 2018-19 to 48 percent in 2021-22, then eased to 39 percent in 2023-24. More than $600 million in federal relief flowed to DCPS, about $6,800 per student, and that money expired in September 2024.

Alabama offered a different lesson. It was the only state where 4th-grade math scores in 2024 were higher than in 2019. DeKalb County improved math achievement by nearly a full grade level from 2019 to 2024 after returning to in-person learning in fall 2020 and reworking elementary math instruction around hands-on manipulatives instead of worksheets. The Scorecard authors described the county as a model for how districts can accelerate math learning and recover from pandemic loss.