Report: NC math rebounds, but reading scores keep falling

North Carolina students have continued to lose ground in reading every year since the state’s signature science-of-reading law took effect, even as math scores have rebounded into the top 10 nationally, according to a new district-level analysis from researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth.

The Education Scorecard, released May 13, ranks North Carolina ninth out of 38 states in math growth between 2022 and 2025, but only 22nd out of 35 states in reading. The average North Carolina student in grades three through eight is now reading roughly two-thirds of a grade level behind 2019. Unlike in math, that gap has continued to grow since pandemic restrictions ended.

“North Carolina’s math recovery ranks in the top 10 nationally but reading scores have continued to fall since 2022 and remain nearly .7 grade equivalents below 2019 levels,” the scorecard’s North Carolina release states.

State officials say it’s too soon to see the full impact of the law in test scores for third through eighth grades. The 2021 Excellent Public Schools Act required every K-3 teacher to be trained in the science of reading, allowed but did not mandate third-grade retention, and placed a literacy coach in every district. The final cohort of teachers completed roughly $50 million in LETRS training in 2024.

Early-grade state assessments show sizable gains in kindergarten and first-grade phonics and decoding, though smaller gains for second and third graders.

“Why are North Carolina readings scores so low? That’s a good question,” said Robert Luebke, director of the Center for Effective Education at the John Locke Foundation. “It’s not for lack of effort to boost scores. Former education secretary Truitt advocated for all teachers learning about the value of the Science of Reading. That’s a good step. Unfortunately, the results aren’t in yet. We should know soon. I’d be surprised if North Carolina reading scores didn’t improve. We have to get reading right because it is so fundamental for learning. Math scores are encouraging, but we have to get the same improvement in reading.”

The Education Scorecard uses data from the Stanford Education Data Archive, which links state test results from roughly 35 million students nationally to a common scale and allows direct comparisons across states.

“The pandemic was the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement,” said Thomas Kane, faculty director of the Harvard center. “The ‘learning recession’ started a decade ago, after policymakers switched off the early warning system of test-based accountability and social media took over children’s lives.”

Eight states or jurisdictions improved in reading between 2022 and 2025, according to the report: the District of Columbia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Tennessee. All eight had comprehensive science-of-reading laws in place.

But researchers concluded that adopting a science-of-reading law wasn’t enough.

“Many states which were implementing multiple elements of ‘science of reading’ reforms have yet to turn around,” the authors wrote, citing North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and Nebraska as examples. “Evidence-based reading reform may be a necessary but insufficient path to improvement.”

Despite the statewide reading slide, three North Carolina districts — Beaufort County, Stanly County, and Wayne County — made the report’s list of 108 “Districts on the Rise” for outpacing similar peers in both math and reading. Wayne County is one of the featured case studies in the report, profiled alongside districts including Birmingham, Atlanta, and Detroit. 

Five additional North Carolina districts made the list for a single subject: New Hanover County and Person County in math; and Currituck County, Moore County, and Onslow County in reading.

The report also flagged North Carolina districts still trailing 2019 levels by a substantial margin. Alamance-Burlington Schools, Rowan-Salisbury Schools, and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools remain more than a full grade level behind their 2019 reading achievement. In math, Gaston County, Buncombe County, and Alamance-Burlington continue to lag.

The authors recommend that states redirect remaining school-improvement dollars toward middle- and higher-poverty districts that received less federal pandemic relief and have seen the slowest recovery. The report found that North Carolina received about $5.6 billion in federal COVID-19 aid for K-12 schools, roughly $3,700 per student. But the bulk of the highest-poverty districts’ gains, the researchers concluded, would have evaporated without that one-time infusion.

“The 108 ‘Districts on the Rise’ are proof that leadership matters and demographics are not destiny,” Kane said. “In districts with high poverty and persistent challenges, local leaders are finding ways to accelerate recovery. We owe it to our children to understand what they are doing and help spread it.”

“Report: NC math rebounds, but reading scores keep falling” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.