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Vermont's reading scores continue to drop on Nation's Report Card

School library interior
Lola Duffort
/
Vermont Public
The library and entryway at Windham Elementary pictured on Feb. 16, 2024.

For the better part of the last two decades, federal testing data consistently saw Vermont students out-performing their peers in other states in math and reading. But no longer.

The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, released Wednesday, show continued, steady declines in reading scores for Vermont fourth- and eighth-grade students. And while Vermont students fared slightly better in math, scores still reflected a slide toward the national average in both subjects and both grades.

NAEP — also known as the Nation’s Report Card — is administered by the federal government, usually every two years, to a representative sample of students in all 50 states and several large urban districts. The tests are intended to offer a snapshot of what students know in certain subjects across the country. Results are not released for individual students or individual schools.

"The NAEP results highlight a sense of urgency to promote student outcomes," Vermont Education Secretary Zoie Saunders said in a statement. “We are committed to elevating outcomes through initiatives like Read Vermont, identifying areas for improvement, reversing the downward trend, and building a future where every student can thrive."

The latest data is based on tests administered electronically between January and March 2024. Testing was last administered in 2022.

These results reflect student performance four years after COVID-19 shuttered schools nationwide. But despite a historic, nearly $190 billion investment from the federal government, NAEP results across the country and in Vermont did not reflect a post-pandemic rebound. Instead, test results — particularly in reading — generally continued to decline, following a decade-long pattern that predates the pandemic.

Fourth- and eighth-grade students in Vermont both saw significant drops in reading scores between 2022 and 2024. And while reading scores declined nationally, they declined slightly more sharply in Vermont.

Results in math offered somewhat better news. Scores for both fourth- and eighth-grade students did not significantly improve in Vermont between 2022 and 2024, but neither did they get worse. Eighth-grade Vermonters did slightly better on the math test than the national average, while fourth-grade students performed slightly worse on average than their peers nationwide.

The gap in performance between economically disadvantaged students and students who are not economically disadvantaged, meanwhile, remains stubbornly wide in Vermont. In both grades in math, and in eighth-grade reading, it was basically unchanged from 2002. And in fourth-grade reading, it got worse.

Vermont’s NAEP results:

  • Grade 4 reading: 31% of students scored at or above proficient, and 58% of students scored at or above basic
  • Grade 8 reading: 29% of students scored at or above proficient, and 67% of students scored at or above basic
  • Grade 4 mathematics: 36% of students scored at or above proficient, and 75% of students scored at or above basic
  • Grade 8 mathematics: 29% of students scored at or above proficient, and 64% of students scored at or above basic.

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Updated: January 30, 2025 at 1:05 PM EST
The data visualizations in this story have been updated with additional context about the NAEP's scoring system.
Lola is Vermont Public's education and youth reporter, covering schools, child care, the child protection system and anything that matters to kids and families. She's previously reported in Vermont, New Hampshire, Florida (where she grew up) and Canada (where she went to college).
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