In January 2006, ABC’s John Stossel’s brutally honest documentary, “Stupid in America,” first aired. At the time, he referred to it as “a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America’s public schools, and it’s about time we face up to it.”
Stossel exposed the ineffectiveness of many government-run schools. But now, 20 years later, things are even worse.
Test scores from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), released this year, show that 33% of 8th graders—a higher percentage than ever—are reading at the “below basic” level.
Additionally, only 22% of high school seniors are proficient in math, down from 24% in 2019, and 35% are proficient in reading—the lowest score since NAEP began in 1969—down from 37% in 2019. Also, a record-high percentage scored at “below basic” levels in both math and reading compared with all previous assessments.
The results of the latest NAEP U.S. history and civics tests, administered in 2022, were atrocious. The scores show that just 13% of 8th-graders met proficiency standards in U.S. history, meaning they could explain key themes, periods, events, people, ideas, and turning points in the country’s history. Additionally, about 20% of students scored at or above the proficient level in civics. Both scores are the lowest ever recorded on these two tests.
The most recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a test administered to 650,000 4th and 8th graders in 64 countries, reveals that average U.S. math scores declined sharply between 2019 and 2023, falling 18 points for 4th graders and 27 points for 8th graders. Internationally, this places the U.S. 22nd of 63 education systems for 4th-grade math and 20th of 45 education systems for 8th-grade math.
Furthermore, average U.S. math scores for 4th- and 8th-grade students reverted to 1995 levels, the first year the TIMSS assessment was administered.