Why NAEP Scores Keep Dropping: It’s Not Just Phonics

NAEP scores are commonly referred to here in the US. Often, we hear the statistic that 2/3 of our kids “can’t read.” The latest NAEP scores have just come out, they keep dropping.  If people weren’t already alarmed, they are now.  Why? Because scores are even lower than in 2022..

First…

There are some misconceptions with how this test is interpreted. The term basic, according to NAEP, is closer to “grade level” than “proficient.” Proficient more accurately equates to slightly above grade level. So, the stat that’s often thrown out, something like 60% of our kids can’t read, is not quite accurate because that stat is using the term “proficient.”

Although NAEP scores are dropping, there’s also no sharp dip going on.  

In the chart I generated from the NAEP website below, it’s clear that scores have been very flat for a very long time. (The dotted line signifies when testing accommodations were not permitted).  I’m not calling these scores awesome by any means, but they’ve been pretty consistent for a very long time.  And if you consider the number of non-English speaking kids that have entered our schools since then, this is actually a remarkable thing to note.   

There is a slight uptick in about the year 2000, when the Reading First initiative was established. This was a government-funded push for strong reading instruction, focused on the 5 pillars of reading that the National Reading Pane (NRP) had established. Then it’s a pretty flat line for a while, before an obvious dip after Covid.  

It is the 2019 reports that really got everybody talking about proficiency levels in America. That dip was the largest we had seen in nearly 30 years, so the alarm bells sounded. But look at that “dip”–it’s very small. 

For many, the solution to rectify these scores was to take a hard look at instructional practices to ensure that all of the facets of reading instruction as spelled out by the NRP were firmly in place. 

This is where Emily Hanford stepped in and reported that phonics instruction had not been happening. I have no idea if this is actually the case. I only work where I work and see what I see. I am not privy to the instructional practices in thousands of classrooms or thousands of districts across the country. I just know what my colleagues and I did when I was in the classroom, and I know what I see in my own school every day. And it is not at all what Hanford reported on her Sold a Story interviews.  This was the catalyst though, for so many states to adopt “science of reading” legislation.  

Phonics instruction is now tightly in place in the majority of states, along with some legislation around 3rd grade retention laws, teacher professional development, and the use of only state-approved “high-quality instructional materials.”  Educators, legislators, and journalists were confident that if we just focused our attention on foundational skills, surely those scores would increase.  The same hope that Reading First brought in the 90s.  Which means that this year’s NAEP scores were expected to be higher.

But that’s not what has happened.  The result was that NAEP scores keep dropping.  

They’re now lower than they’ve been in a very long time, even right after Covid.

This year scores in states such as Florida and Arizona have gone down, while scores in most other states remain unchanged since 2022.  According to NAEP, “0 states scored higher; 5 states scored lower; and 47 states had no significant change in scores.”  Including Louisiana and Mississippi, two states touted in the media as rocking it, but whose scores only went up 2 points this go-round as compared to 2022. 

Obviously, if a district or state has just enacted science of reading practices in the last year or two, NAEP scores would not yet be reflective of that work. But if we drill down to the districts that have had these laws in place for a number of years, it leaves one to scratch their head. Mississippi’s laws have been in place since 2013.  North Carolina and Florida, 2017.  Arizona (and many, many others), 2019.  

The drop from the historic low scores of 2022 comes despite an unprecedented infusion of federal funding that flowed into schools, fueling tutoring and other interventions aimed at addressing learning loss.

Edweek, January 29, 2025

So people are looking for reasons to explain it.  All over social media, I’m seeing a gamut of reasons to excuse it. Reasons no one seemed to mention before with NAEP, but are only now being brought up:  the test is too rigorous, kids didn’t get enough play in kindergarten, parents are too lenient, technology has left children with no attention span or stamina, and so many more.

These are all factors to consider, for sure. And more, like Covid and absenteeism.

But many of course argue that NAEP scores keep dropping due to the residual effects of “balanced literacy, “and we need to further buckle down on foundational skills.

I must point out, though, that balanced literacy was at its heyday from about the mid 90s to 2017, when NAEP scores were actually at their highest.

Balanced literacy gets bad rap by so many, because it’s so misunderstood and very erroneously defined.  But by definition, the very term “balanced” means that if some teachers had not included phonics in their daily instruction, it couldn’t possibly be called  balanced.  In his Deadly Words Substack series, professor and literacy leader Claude Goldenburg concurs, saying, “Unfortunately, when paired with “literacy”, “balanced” has been transmogrified into something vague, ill-defined, and never intended by the NRP.”

That’s right.  The NRP, all those years ago, advocated that “systematic phonics instruction should be integrated with other reading instruction to create a balanced reading program. Phonics instruction is never a total reading program.”

Here’s what I think is really what’s causing NAEP scores to keep dropping. 

When companies, podcasts, the media in general, and social media are all saying phonics, phonics, phonics phonics, it is no wonder that teachers will go too far with phonics.  

Teachers are now teaching only phonics and foundational skills and leaving the rest out. Julia B. Lindsey, author of Reading Above the Fray,  recently posted on Instagram to warn about this practice. She showed an example of an actual school schedule, where foundational skill work was quite long in the day, but no other reading was included. This ignores so much of the research, and a great portion of the reading rope. 

Additionally, if students get nothing but phonics and read nothing but decodable texts in order to apply the phonics, and don’t do much thinking work in terms of comprehension, their reading muscles will not develop. 

When teachers are the ones doing all of the comprehension heavy lifting through read aloud, it will never be nearly enough. 

Think about it. 

When you read, you do all the heavy lifting. Your eyes take in  the print. Your brain processes that print and makes meaning of it. You connect to language that you’ve heard before and you store new words. You work to hold onto what you’ve read in that text from earlier parts and connect it to later parts. You connect that reading to your world or your life, you make predictions, you question, you pay attention and notice when you’ve messed up and then you do some fixing up.  You might get stuck on something and need to employ a strategy to help you get through it. You might even get distracted, and then have to redirect your own self.  

This is the work of a reader.

When we do all of the reading beyond decodables for our kids, as in read aloud, we take away a great deal of that heavy lifting. Indeed, you take reading away from them. I’m not talking about just kindergarten and first graders. I’m talking well beyond that. 

Kids need to do the heavy lifting. They have to have a lot of practice with it. They have to sit down with a book or a text and take the print, make sense of it, notice when it doesn’t make sense, pull out a strategy that they have learned to get back on track, hold onto that text over the course of the pages and chapters, and arrive at big ideas. 

Yes, this all begins with skills in decoding. There’s no question about that.  

But they have to have practice with all of this consolidation from the get-go. Lots and lots of practice.

Leaving out that critical independent practice, with feedback, would be akin to a basketball player only watching videos of Michael Jordan play basketball or only listening to basketball games on the radio, and only getting to dribble the ball. 

When that player then goes to play a game and they’re suddenly told, “Go ahead, you’ve seen it done and you know how to dribble. Now play the game and do it well,”  we have in fact set them up for failure. 

Reading takes time. Practice. Over and over and over. It takes feedback, coaching, responsive teaching. It’s a consolidation of skills, not isolated practice. It’s done in layers. 

That’s what builds competence.  And competence breeds confidence.  And that is what makes all the difference.

So for the districts across our country who say they’ve been following the science for nearly a decade now, like Mississippi and Florida, they have actually not been following the science.

No science of reading says kids shouldn’t read real texts. 

No science of reading says kids shouldn’t have access to real books.

No science of reading says that comprehension of reading (not just listening) should be skipped.

No science of reading would ever, ever say that phonics is all there is to it. 

So to those states who did not perform well on NAEP, especially those that  have been doing “science of reading” for a number of years, it’s time to look at the big picture. 

It is always about balance. And it always will be about balance. 

People who were teaching reading and calling it balanced literacy 10 years ago, but never taught phonics, did not have balance. As well, people who now only teach foundational skills and never give kids a chance with authentic texts are also not balanced. Nor are they following the science. 

So Florida, for the love of reading, put books back in classrooms! 

And teachers–remember that we need to make room for all that matters when it comes to literacy instruction.

Oh–and what of the arguments on social media about all the other reasons NAEP scores keep dropping?  I’ll address this in next week’s post!

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Who is Coach from the Couch??  I’m Michelle, a 25-year veteran educator, currently a K-5 literacy coach.  I continue to learn alongside teachers in classrooms each and every day, and it’s my mission to support as many teachers as I can.  Because no one can do this work alone. I’m available to you, too, through virtual coaching calls!  Simply email me at [email protected] or reach out for a coaching call! I’m here to partner with you to build that foundation of student motivation for writing so your students can realize greater success.

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