As a woman on the verge of entering her 20s, I often find myself pondering what I want from life and what society expects of me, and I frequently think about children. Maybe it’s because I’m the eldest in a large family, or maybe it’s because I’ve begun to imagine what it might feel like to have a family of my own one day.
Quite honestly, what I keep coming back to is the realization that my childhood is over. The challenges and struggles I face now will be those of an adult capable of finding her way. The changes being made in the lives of children today will be the ones I witness, rather than ones I will experience — but they are still ones I can advocate for.
We still remember a slightly different world, but the economic, technological, and societal changes that emerged during our childhood will be all that these next generations know. However, the question remains: are those changes really improving us as a society? We thought so, which is why we let them occur, but we are still seeing plateaus or declines in areas we shouldn’t. Are these outcomes happening in spite of our efforts, or because of them? Most importantly, were there warnings about these consequences that we blissfully ignored, or were we genuinely not able to see them?
That has driven me to examine all the ways the children of today and tomorrow will grow up. Our children are arguably the most vulnerable yet important group. Especially in our current time, when so many things that should be ringing alarm bells about their future are normalized, I find it crucial that we look deeper and create the change we want for our children so they can build upon it for their future generations.
With that said, welcome to part one of my article series dedicated to the next generation and why we should care about what they face, not just for their sake but for all of ours. First up, let’s return to the basic building block of childhood development and look at our education system.
Looking at the Statistics
It was common to see some learning loss post-2020, given that the pandemic led to a sizable period where students weren’t learning, at least not as they would in a classroom with their peers and teachers. However, the problem seems to run deeper than that. First, sources like the New York Times and NPR report that these patterns have persisted in education data for decades before the pandemic. Second, the rates after the pandemic remain lower than experts would like, and in some cases, have dropped even further.
In its January report, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, showed that “the percentage of eighth graders who have ‘below basic’ reading skills was the largest it has been in the exam’s three-decade history,” at 33 percent, according to The New York Times. While math scores have increased compared to pandemic levels, the New York Times reported that even those “are not enough to offset the losses of the pandemic.” Similarly, NPR reported that while students have certainly improved in math since the pandemic, “in both reading and math, most fourth and eighth graders in 2024 still performed below pre-pandemic 2019 levels.”
The NAEP is a particularly rigorous exam. However, as scores decline, experts predict that students will lack adequate skills as they progress through their academic and professional careers. For example, according to The New York Times, eighth graders “who score below basic cannot determine the main idea of a text or identify differing sides of an argument.”
While the January report focused on fourth- and eighth-graders, a newer NAEP report released in September illustrates learning loss among 12th graders. The New York Times reported that the new data shows “a third of the 12th-graders who were tested last year did not have basic reading skills,” meaning they “may not be able to determine the purpose of a political speech.”
Similarly, in math, “nearly half of the test takers scored below the basic level,” meaning 12th graders “may not have mastered skills like using percentages to solve real-world problems.” Overall, PBS reported that “in reading, the average score in 2024 was the lowest score in the history of the assessment, which began in 1992,” and “in math, the average score in 2024 was the lowest since 2005, when the assessment framework changed significantly.”
This data is particularly alarming, as it shows that many students preparing to pursue higher education or enter the workforce don’t have the skills to set them up for success. In a statement to The Times, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which gives the NAEP exam, Matthew Soldner, said, “Only about a third of 12th graders are leaving high school with the reading and math skills necessary for college-level work.” A separate Times article about what these declines mean for the U.S. work force reported that the lower their skill set, the harder it is for young workers to climb the ladder.
The September report also held data about eighth-grade science. In that subject, The Times reported that “Performance in 2024 declined, with 38 percent of students scoring below the basic level, compared with 33 percent in 2019.”
These declines are especially pronounced in lower-performing students. In a statement to The Times, Peggy Car, the former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said, “Our lowest performing students are reading at historically low levels.” In fact, NPR reported that the January NAEP report shows “The highest-performing eighth-graders improved in math compared with 2022, but the lowest-performing students moved in the opposite direction, losing ground in 2024.”
The disparities aren’t just between performance levels. According to the Associated Press, significant gender gaps became visible post-pandemic as well. Traditionally, girls tend to perform better in English, while boys tend to perform better in math and science. However, leading up to the pandemic, these disparities had significantly narrowed.
Still, once schools reopened, “girls lost all the ground they had gained in math test scores over the previous decade,” reported the Associated Press, as they were not able to recover at the rate of boys their age. This illustrates that, despite efforts to include young girls and women in STEM, the field remains male-dominated, even in K-12 school systems.
However, it isn’t just girls who are falling behind. The A.P. reported that while girls struggled to make up levels in math, they “outperformed boys in reading in nearly every district nationwide before the pandemic and continued to do so afterward.”
What’s Pushing the Numbers Down
If the pandemic isn’t entirely to blame for the drop in education, then what is? Experts point to various reasons, the first being phones and social media. According to The New York Times, before 2013, smartphones “had not reached half of American adults.” However, now “90 percent of U.S. adults and a similar share of teenagers own a smartphone, as do one in three 9-year-olds.” Although there is no clear-cut answer as to why screen time leads to declines, The Times reported that “smartphones also take time away from other activities. Children (and adults) are reading fewer books than in the past, with low-scoring students being the least likely to read recreationally.”
UCF’s Associate Professor of English and Interim Associate Chair of the English Department, Dr. Emily Johnson, taught middle school in 2003 and continued for eight years before teaching at the collegiate level.
“Assigning causation to something like this is tough and it’s probably multifaceted,” Johnson said. “Social media may be impacting motivations and just how students are spending their time. If you’re scrolling and you’re seeing all of these algorithmically adapted things to keep your attention, it’s going to be harder to support yourself in a way to actually learn and go have fun, exploring new topics.”
Additionally, policies that hold schools and teachers accountable have become less strict or have been entirely reversed. An example of this is the No Child Left Behind Act, which was in place during Former President George W. Bush’s term. The law emphasized standardized testing, which many in the educational realm have been critical of.
“I left K-12 because of the high-stakes testing,” Johnson said. “It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around how one test on one day, that’s a multiple choice, should have such a large impact on a child’s life.”
Still, the act’s goal was to bring all students to proficient levels. However, with opposition from both parties, the act wasn’t strictly enforced upon states, and “scores among low performers began to fall,” reported The Times.
Current politics have also played a large part in the education results. According to The Times, Republicans are trying to privatize education institutions, while Democrats are “focused more on social supports for students, like nutrition and mental health counseling, than on academic rigor.” While these efforts are still relatively new, neither has helped resolve the underlying issues.
Furthermore, the Trump administration is continuing to make cuts to the government, sparing no sector, including education. In May, the Supreme Court issued an injunction that prevented the administration from reducing the size of the education department, NPR reported. In a separate article, NPR reported that this has resulted in a decrease in both the number of staffers and the number of tests performed.
While Johnson is unsure how effective standardized testing is, she argues that “It’s certainly important to track it. When we stop measuring entirely, I think that’s a sign that we don’t care, and if [scores] get worse, then maybe, we may try to make changes.”
NPR also reported that new budget proposals by the Trump Administration and House Republicans will cut funding for English language learners and Title I schools, further exacerbating the socioeconomic and language disparities. Johnson has already experienced the effects of this from cuts earlier this year.
Having conducted research in language learning and video games, Johnson and her colleagues “have a whole bunch of interactive video games to help students practice their vocabulary for those language classes.” Given a three-year grant by the Department of Education to conduct further research, Johnson and her team’s grant was canceled. She said that this will make it “even more difficult for those students to succeed.”
“The SES level and achievement in education, that’s been a correlation for quite some time now,” Johnson said. “If you’re worried about when you’re going to eat next, it’s hard to focus on homework. If that’s getting worse, it’s certainly going to pose a challenge to bridge the gap between where they end up in high school and where they come in college.”
Dr. Emily Johnson
Including a broader population in the public school system may also lead to lower numbers. Both English-language learners and students with disabilities “are more likely to score below their peers on standardized tests,” according to The New York Times. Johnson’s experience teaching middle school was an example of this. Decades ago, students of different backgrounds and abilities would be separated. But now, things are different.
“The law said that all students had to be placed in the least restrictive learning environment. That meant that if the student could sit through your class and not be disruptive, then they could be there,” Johnson said. “[This] made teaching harder because you have a wider variety of abilities coming in, and then you still have the same standards of where you had to get everybody. Most of our energy was spent on getting everybody to the minimum standard.”
Still, The Times reported that experts believe “it is most likely not the biggest factor.”
Some also point to the “Great Recession” as a partial explanation for lower scores. Starting in late December 2007, this economic decline quickly led to cuts in school spending, resulting in teacher layoffs and fewer resources, and these cuts persisted for years. These cuts had the largest impact on low-scoring students, “who tend to be in poor school districts that relied heavily on state funding,” according to The Times. While recession cuts occurred over a decade ago, they still have deep effects. Coupled with other past and present factors, these effects are still felt today.
While the pandemic isn’t entirely to blame, it has led to another consequence: lower attendance. The Times reported that when student absences have generally increased in recent years, they still “remain significantly higher than they were pre-pandemic.” These absences make it difficult for students to improve, as they often miss key lessons.
Why Should We Care
So far, I have shared a lot of information about the lower scores experts are noticing and why they may be happening. But why should we, as college-aged students, care? In part two, we’ll look at what these lower scores could mean for colleges across the nation and the future of society, as well as what we can do to boost the education of the next generation of students.