The latest long-term data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show a stark divergence in reading progress by age: 9-year-olds have improved compared with past decades, while 13-year-olds show little overall progress and, in many cases, declines. The results raise urgent questions about why the gains made in early elementary grades are not being sustained through adolescence.
Progress that stalls
NAEP’s long-term trend tests, which track reading and mathematics performance among representative samples of American 9- and 13-year-olds dating back to the 1970s, were designed to measure fundamental skills appropriate to those ages. The most recent release shows that younger students are doing better than their counterparts from several decades ago, an encouraging sign that early literacy efforts may be working. But the picture changes sharply for adolescents.
Whereas 9-year-olds show broad, long-term gains in reading and math, 13-year-olds show little measurable improvement overall. Only the highest-performing adolescent readers now outperform their peers from the 1970s; most other students display minimal change. The trend suggests that the early progress many children make is not being built on as they move into middle school.
Pandemic made a bad trend worse
Researchers and education leaders point to the COVID-19 pandemic as an exacerbating factor, not the root cause. Before school closures and learning disruptions, 13-year-olds had registered modest gains compared with the 1970s, but those gains lagged behind improvements seen among younger children. When the pandemic hit, it appears to have hit today’s adolescents at a particularly vulnerable time in their learning trajectories: scores for 13-year-olds fell across the achievement spectrum, with declines reported at every percentile.
That pervasive drop runs counter to the often-repeated reassurance that children are resilient and will quickly recover from time away from classrooms. The long-term numbers paint a different picture: pandemic-related interruptions contributed to a backslide during a developmental window when students are expected to deepen reading comprehension, vocabulary and disciplinary literacy.
Why it matters
Reading underpins nearly every other academic subject. Students who do not continue to build reading skills in adolescence face progressively narrower options for advanced coursework and postsecondary opportunities. The NAEP findings therefore signal a broad risk to student futures if systems do not address the transition from early literacy to adolescent reading development.
Key takeaways from the NAEP results include:
- Early elementary reading gains are real and measurable for 9-year-olds compared with the 1970s.
- Those gains largely evaporate by age 13 for most students; only top-performing adolescents show clear improvement relative to prior generations.
- The COVID-19 pandemic deepened declines for 13-year-olds, producing drops across the achievement spectrum.
| Age group | Long-term trend |
|---|---|
| 9-year-olds | Broad improvement since the 1970s |
| 13-year-olds | Little overall progress; declines after pandemic |
What educators and policymakers face
The data present a policy and practice challenge: sustaining early gains requires targeted work in middle school to deepen comprehension, build academic vocabulary and connect reading to subject-area learning. Educators must identify which approaches are closing gaps and which are failing to reach the majority of adolescents.
Experts have highlighted that the pandemic amplified existing vulnerabilities, and the NAEP release lends weight to calls for sustained intervention rather than short-term remediation. That could include expanded literacy instruction tailored to older students, investments in teacher professional learning focused on adolescent literacy, and closer attention to the social and emotional context that shapes learning during the teenage years.
For families and communities, the trend is a reminder that early gains do not guarantee later success. Continued monitoring, targeted supports for middle grades and collaboration between elementary and secondary educators will be essential if the United States hopes to translate early reading progress into lasting academic advantage.
With only a portion of adolescents improving since the 1970s and recent pandemic-related declines across the board, the NAEP data frame a pressing national question: how to prevent the transition to adolescence from becoming the point where reading progress stalls for a generation of students.
