“We must rebuild American education from the ground up.”
Today, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, released the 2024 results from the 12th grade assessment on math and reading and 8th grade results from the 2024 science assessment, all showing a stark decline.
Following is the statement by CER Founder and CEO Jeanne Allen:
“The latest NAEP scores confirm what parents and employers already know: our schools are failing at their most basic task. Only 22% of high school seniors are proficient in math and just 35% in reading — the lowest in more than 20 years. This matches the devastating 8th grade results released earlier this year and continues a decade-long slide that began well before the pandemic. The decline for African American students, whose 12th grade reading levels dropped 11 points, almost twice the rate of their white counterparts is one data point that exemplifies the inequity in our systems.
Forty years ago, A Nation at Risk warned that if a foreign power had imposed such results, we would have considered it an act of war. Today, the crisis is homegrown — and it is eroding America’s workforce and future competitiveness. You cannot lead in AI, aviation, or semiconductor manufacturing if your graduates can’t pass the nation’s benchmark test.
The Nation’s Report Card is clear: we must rebuild American education from the ground up. Start over. From scratch. And we must return power to parents, not bureaucracies, to drive their children’s education. The future of American innovation depends on it.”
Founded in 1993, CER is the pioneer and leading voice for innovation and opportunity in American education. Through its many initiatives, like the Yass Prize for Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding and Permissionless Education, CER works to find, reward, celebrate and expand education providers that outperform for underserved students.