Teenage Literacy Is As Bad As It Was In The 1970s. What’s Going On?

This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.

***

American 13-year-olds read no better than teenagers in 1971.

That is the conclusion of the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) long-term trend exam, the only national test the federal government has administered in the same form for more than half a century. After decades of reform efforts, new technologies, and a more-than-doubling of inflation-adjusted spending per student, our students are no better off.

Many will blame COVID-19. That was the dominant explanation when the last round of long-term trend results was released in 2022 and 2023. NAEP even saw fit to put it in the title: “Reading and mathematics scores decline during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

But that is the wrong takeaway. The decline didn’t begin with the pandemic. It began around 2012. Reading and math scores for 13-year-olds fell significantly between 2012 and 2020, and the 2020 test was finished before the pandemic shut down a single school. COVID accelerated the decline, but did not cause it.

The most important finding is not that average scores fell, but who fell.

For years, national averages hid a widening divide. The strongest students held their ground, while the weakest fell further behind. Among 13-year-olds, the gap between the highest and lowest quarter of students exceeds 50 points across both reading and math. That gap had been widening well before the pandemic.

The lowest-income 13-year-olds, the ones for whom reading is the best way out of poverty, still read below their 2012 level, 24 points behind their wealthier peers. Math is no better: they’ve fallen 16 points since 2012 and sit 31 points behind their peers. Neither subject improved between 2023 and 2025.

Click here for more Manhattan Institute content.

This began back in 2012, when the Obama administration began allowing states to opt out of No Child Left Behind. The law was unpopular and not perfect, but it forced schools to report results separately for poor, black, and Hispanic students. And it made schools face consequences — including replacing staff, removing the principal, or having the state take over the school — when any group fell behind. The waivers ultimately removed those consequences for 40 states, though the reporting remained. Congress then made the retreat from accountability permanent in 2015, with broad support from both parties.

No national assessment can prove that No Child Left Behind caused the gains of the 2000s or that its rollback caused the declines that followed. But the timing is hard to ignore. The largest gains came when schools were required to report results for their poorest students and be held accountable for them. The decline set in after that requirement was lifted, and the students it was meant to protect are the ones still furthest from recovery.

Washington’s answer wasn’t to restore accountability. It was just to spend.

Congress spent $190 billion to help schools recover from the pandemic, more than the federal government has ever spent on K-12 schools at once. The deadline to spend it passed in 2024. For 9-year-olds, the money did bring progress, but those students are only back to where they were before the pandemic. For 13-year-olds, the money bought nothing. Their scores are exactly where they were two years ago.

Lately, the blame game has shifted to screens. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten recently pointed to devices as a major reason students are behind academically. She has a point. The share of 13-year-olds who read for fun almost every day has fallen by half since 2012, from 27% to 14%, and has remained at that level since 2023.

But screens cannot fully explain these results. Every state faces the same digital culture. Students everywhere carry the same distractions in their pockets. Yet some states keep outperforming the rest.

Smartphones and Chromebooks made teaching harder, but they didn’t make it impossible.

The more persuasive explanation is that schools became less focused on ensuring that their weakest students learned to read and do math. For one decade, Washington required schools to answer for their weakest students. That decade coincided with some of the largest achievement gains ever recorded, especially among disadvantaged students. As education moves to the states, the few exceptions to national declines are the states that measure every student, publish the results, and ensure accountability.

Washington didn’t lose track of its lowest performers. It just signed more than 40 waivers excusing itself from looking. This week, we learned what over a decade of not looking costs.

***

Jennifer Weber is a fellow for K-12 Education Policy at the Manhattan Institute.