By Dr. Melvin J. Brown
Today’s release of the 2024 NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress, best known as the Nation’s Report Card) reveals what many of us feared: U.S. high school students—particularly seniors—have hit record lows.
- Reading scores are the lowest since testing began in 1992.
- Math scores are the lowest since 2005.
- Barely 35% of 12th graders are proficient in reading, and only 22–33% in math.
- Nearly half of seniors now score below the “basic” level—a threshold designed to represent foundational skills.
These numbers aren’t just about pandemic-related learning loss. COVID may have accelerated the decline, but the slide began decades ago. Today’s results are the predictable consequences of a system built not around deeper learning, but around measurement, categorization, and competition.
Where Did We Go Wrong? The Roots of the Testing Machine
The genesis of the concern can be found in the late-1980s through early-2000s, when we embraced a standardized-testing culture fueled by political agendas, industry lobbying, and big-box educational “solutions.” The crescendo came with the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001, which fundamentally reshaped public education around accountability metrics.
1. Teaching to the Test Became the Curriculum
Instead of expanding knowledge, classrooms contracted. Students received less science, social studies, art, music, and recess—all in service to test preparation. Creativity and curiosity were casualties of a system obsessed with multiple-choice proficiency. Critical thinking and the benefits of learning from failure fell by the wayside in favor of shallow analysis and superficial reasoning coupled with pressure to demonstrate understanding on a test and being correct the very first time.
2. Schools Were Sorted, Ranked, and Shamed
Politicians and policymakers designed accountability systems that didn’t just measure student learning—they sorted, labeled, and categorized entire schools and districts into neat boxes: “failing,” “needs improvement,” “excellent.”
This framing devastated communities:
- It stigmatized students in underresourced schools as somehow “less capable.”
- It weaponized test scores to justify school closures and privatization, especially in low-income and majority-Black districts.
- It diverted energy and resources away from addressing inequities—poverty, trauma, funding gaps—toward chasing labels created by people far removed from classrooms.
When schools are reduced to numbers, our children are reduced with them.
3. Accountability Metrics Over Learner Realities
NCLB promised that every child would reach proficiency by 2014. But instead of addressing systemic inequities, policymakers doubled down on punitive measures for schools that “failed” to grow quickly enough. Many schools redirected time, funding, and talent away from enrichment and intervention into test prep drills, sacrificing real learning on the altar of compliance.
4. Industry Profits Over Student Needs
Testing firms, textbook publishers, and consulting giants flourished under this system. Standardized assessments became an industry, producing millions in profits while stripping schools of local autonomy. Politicians touted “data-driven decision-making,” but students—especially the most vulnerable—were left further behind.
What Today’s NAEP Scores Really Show
The new NAEP data reveal a widening chasm: while the highest-performing students have largely held steady, the lowest-performing students—often in schools hit hardest by inequity—are plummeting. This isn’t just a pandemic hangover. It’s the legacy of policies that prioritized categorization over capacity-building. One must be very suspicious as to the intended purpose.
Students didn’t fail these tests; the system failed these students.
The Path Forward: Reclaim Learning From the Testing Machine
We can’t test our way to excellence. If we truly want to reverse this trend, we must dismantle the structures that put numbers over children:
- End the Testing Industrial Complex: Replace relentless standardized testing with teacher-led, formative, and meaningful assessments that actually inform instruction.
- Stop Ranking and Sorting Schools: Accountability should drive support, not stigma. We need systems that lift schools up, not label them for political gain.
- Reinvest in Equity: Direct funds away from testing mandates and into literacy initiatives, arts programs, mental health supports, tutoring, and early intervention.
- Redefine Success: Move beyond bubble sheets. Encourage deeper learning, critical thinking, project-based inquiry, and real-world problem solving.
- Use NAEP as a Mirror, Not a Mallet: Let national data guide systemic supports—not shame, close, or punish the schools serving students who need the most.
In Closing
Today’s NAEP results are a sobering reminder that we’re living with the long-term consequences of political choices. The obsession with sorting, ranking, and labeling schools—and, by extension, children—has stripped joy, humanity, and creativity from classrooms.
If we want students who are literate, curious, resilient, and prepared to lead, we need to rebuild a system that values learning over labeling. That means confronting the testing industrial complex head-on, prioritizing equity, and restoring public education to its true purpose: to nurture potential, not reduce it to a percentile.
It’s time to stop categorizing schools as winners and losers—and start investing in every child’s capacity to thrive.
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