The latest Long-Term Trend results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—dubbed the Nation’s Report Card—are out, and they’re kind of “meh.” On one hand, 9‑year-olds posted modest gains in reading and math compared with the last assessment. But those gains only partially recover losses from the pandemic era, while 13-year-olds remain stuck well below where they were just a few years ago.
Perhaps most troubling, reading performance among older students remains where it was when the test was first administered in 1971, while math is only slightly higher than the first test in 1973. These results are particularly shocking when you consider that we spend three times as much per student as we did in 1970 (adjusted for inflation). According to the latest national figures, average per-student spending in public schools tops $20,000.
Despite the Nation’s Report Card moniker, NAEP is not a report card for any particular school, teacher, or student. It provides a snapshot of how students are performing nationally. NAEP can tell us whether outcomes for various groups are improving or deteriorating, but it can’t tell us why.
The latest results show that decades of top-down reforms have not produced the improvements many predicted. Policymakers have repeatedly increased spending, expanded regulations, adjusted standards, redesigned assessments, and implemented various accountability systems. Yet long-term results remain disappointing.
That reality should make us cautious about claims that the next bureaucratic fix will finally solve the problem.
The deeper issue is accountability. In a monopoly system, leaders attempt to drive accountability by having government officials measure performance and impose consequences. But success depends on politicians and bureaucracies correctly identifying problems and acting on them. History suggests that is easier said than done.
Parental accountability works differently. Families don’t need years of NAEP data to know when their child is thriving or falling behind. They experience the results directly. When parents have meaningful educational options, schools have a stronger incentive to respond because dissatisfied families can leave—and take their funding with them.
The latest NAEP results don’t prove that school choice is the answer to every educational challenge. But they illustrate something parents already know—the existing system is often not generating the outcomes families deserve. If decades of centralized reforms have produced stagnant achievement and widening concerns about student performance, it makes little sense to double down on the same approach.
Ultimately, the latest NAEP results illustrate that millions of kids, particularly older ones, are stuck in a system that hasn’t meaningfully improved in half a century. Test scores are just a symptom. While not a panacea, educational freedom is a key part of the remedy.