Research Wednesday | October 8, 2025
Reconsidering the Causes for the Decline in NAEP Scores
NAEP scores have fallen in two consecutive administrations of “The Nation’s Report Card,” as NAEP is sometimes called. There are many speculations about the reason for the decline in NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress). It could be the lingering effects of the Pandemic, when, despite the fact that students were far below grade level in reading and math, administrators refused to give teachers and students the time that they needed to catch up, stubbornly resisting the evidence that their reliance on summer school and after-school were not working. It could be the rise in chronic absenteeism, behavioral disruptions, and significant turnover in the teaching and leadership ranks. Another common explanation is the rise in student mental health disorders, including anxiety and depression. The two major political parties take turns blaming the other for poor educational performance, but these debates are not illuminating.
However, Daniel Willingham of the University of Virginia suggests that we also consider a more straightforward explanation: A significant decline in student conscientiousness. Every generation likes to accuse their successors of being slackers, but it’s hard to blame the decline in motivation on students alone. 83% of grade 3-8 teachers report a decrease in student reading stamina - the willingness to engage in a complex text, discuss it, and react to it. In many secondary schools, teachers no longer require novels and other complex texts because they despair over students’ lack of engagement and interest. Conscientiousness had the most significant decline in the past ten years of the five personality traits that psychologists study.
I’d like to offer a couple of additional underlying causes for students' failure to progress in reading. First, more than half the states have adopted mandatory “science of reading” curricula, in some cases abandoning a commitment to writing, which is a core component of any effective literacy program. Second, while every generation likes to blame the kids (remember the line from Bye-Bye Birdie, “Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way?”). The evidence does not let parents and other adult role models off the hook. Stanford’s Kelly McGonigal (“The Upside of Stress”) and NYU’s Wendy Suzuki (“Good Anxiety”) both make the case that the very bright students – bright enough to get into Standard and NYU- have received 18 years before college of excuse-making for poor work, late work, and not showing up to class. Professors report that when a student runs into trouble, the answer is often not to take advantage of university support services on everything from time management to effective writing. Instead, the professors regularly report that student difficulty results in calls from the students’ parents to ask the professor for leniency due to their children's special challenges. Will these parents also call their children’s future employers when the kids receive a negative performance review?
I am not discounting the other explanations for the decline in NAEP scores. Still, Willingham reports that the variable of conscientiousness alone has an effect size of .4. You will recall from John Hattie’s research that an effect size of .4 is the threshold that reflects a year of learning. The bottom line is that blame is not a strategy: personal responsibility and a thoughtful response to encountering challenges are. Great teachers and leaders have always done this. During COVID, Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) was all the rage. But too often we fail to include the “L” in SEL – confident that learning and academic progress are critical components of emotional well-being.
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