Test scores for America’s grade schools continue to show a dismal decline in basic reading and math skills, but four red states that were once seen as laggards are now bucking the nationwide trend.  

According to the 2024 assessment by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 12th graders tested in reading and math have shown a continuing decline since 1992. This report follows a 2020 study by the Department of Education that found that 54% of U.S. adults—130 million people—read at or below a sixth-grade level. 

This year, 19-year-old Aleysha Ortiz sued the Hartford Board of Education, charging that, although she graduated with honors from Hartford Public High School in 2024, she cannot read or write. And Ivy League schools like Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton are reportedly no longer assigning whole books to students because reading an entire book is too difficult. 

Going against this grim trend, however, Mississippi, Louisiana, Indiana, and Tennessee have achieved consistent improvement in their kids’ scores. Education experts say much of this is about getting back to basics in how these subjects are taught, while maintaining tough standards for students and teachers.  

“These states in particular have very strong school accountability systems,” Christy Hovanetz, senior policy fellow for ExcelinEd, told The Daily Signal. “They have high expectations for students and historically have been very transparent in how they report data and information.” 

Tennessee, for example, implemented a rigorous Comprehensive Assessment Program that tests third graders to ensure they are reading proficiently before they can advance to fourth grade. Students who do not pass are offered free interventions, such as summer school or after-school tutoring.  

“We adopted higher standards, and we’re testing to those standards,” Tennessee state Rep. Mark White, who chairs the House Education Committee, told The Daily Signal. “By doing that, based upon our NAEP scores, we were recognized as the fastest improving state.”  

Catching problems early is critical, experts say. 

“Third grade is really a key age, where we’ve got to correct those early literacy issues, if they exist with a student, otherwise we risk them falling further and further behind,” Andrew Handel, director of the Education and Workforce Development Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council, told The Daily Signal.  

But it is also a matter of using curriculums that have proven to be successful. When teaching kids to read, Hovanetz said, this includes a focus on phonics, which decodes words from letter sounds, over the more recent “three-cueing theory,” which was developed in the 1960s and teaches students to guess at words from their context or from pictures.   

“There is a significant library of research demonstrating that phonics is superior to cueing,” Jonathan Butcher, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, told The Daily Signal. “The progressive approach to teaching in general is less precise than what we would call today the classical approach to education.” 

Many states have also worked to limit distractions in the classroom, including cellphone bans and laws like Tennessee’s “Educators’ Bill of Rights” bill, which gives teachers more authority over disruptions in their classrooms. 

“We wanted to pass that particular bill to say a teacher has rights and you can’t just dump anything on the teacher and say you’ve got to deal with it,” White said.  

In addition to declining average reading ability, the National Assessment of Educational Progress also showed a widening gap between the best and worst students. 

“Since 1992, the gap between students in the 90th percentile and the 10th percentile has expanded by 27 points, and that’s because students in the [bottom] 10th percentile fell by 25 points while students in the 90th percentile actually went up by two,” Handel said. “Students aren’t just falling behind, they are falling really far behind.” 

Beyond personal struggles, there is also a social cost to illiteracy, experts say. According to a 2007 study by the Department of Education, more than half the Americans in prison had only basic or below-basic literacy skills.  

Reversing America’s declining education systems has required a long-term dedication.  

“The Mississippi improvement started a decade ago,” Butcher said. “They’re one of the states that has the fastest gains of any state in the country, and right along with them is Louisiana.” 

In Tennessee, “we’re in our 15th year of a lot of focus on education,” White said, with strong support from former Gov. Bill Haslam and current Gov. Bill Lee. “We’ve had a lot of consistency.” 

And while school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic have harmed kids’ education, Butcher says the decline in American kids’ reading and math scores goes deeper than that. 

“The downward trend in student test scores was happening before COVID,” he said. 

But experts say all is not lost and that other states can reverse the trend of academic failure. 

“Don’t sell our kids short—if we set high expectations, kids will rise to meet them,” Hovanetz said. “I’m disappointed in actions that have been taken in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Illinois, and most recently Kansas to lower expectations on what students should know and be able to do.” 

“If we lower the bar to meet them where they are now, post-COVID, we’re never going to get back on track and improve,” she said.

The post 4 Red States Defy National Education Trends, See Higher Math, Reading Scores appeared first on The Daily Signal.