Overview
- The findings draw on Spring 2025 MAP Growth assessments of more than 7 million students in grades 3–8 across roughly 20,000 schools.
- Reading achievement remains stuck near pandemic-era lows across most grades and student groups, with only a slight year-over-year uptick for eighth graders.
- Math performance has improved modestly each year since 2021 but remains below pre-pandemic benchmarks, and no grade has returned to 2019 levels.
- Early-grade math gaps have narrowed due to stronger gains among historically lower-performing students, including third-grade gaps shrinking by about one-third in high-poverty schools, 41% for Hispanic students, and 27% for Black students.
- Researchers say the causes of the divergence are unresolved, pointing to math’s responsiveness to classroom interventions versus reading’s sensitivity to out-of-school factors such as technology’s effects on attention.