Oregon students are continuing to face significant challenges in reading and math, according to a federal education report released yesterday — the state placed among the lowest in the nation for proficiency.
The big picture: Oregon fourth graders, who took the standardized tests in early 2024, ranked second-worst in the country for math and tied with 10 other states for third-worst for reading.
Eighth graders in the state — who took the test during the same time and are now in their first year of high school — performed "significantly below" the national average in math but placed middle of the road for reading.
State of play: Student performance worsened over the nearly two years of remote learning during the pandemic and, for some, those gaps have only widened since returning to the classroom.
Fourth graders in 2024 were struggling more with reading and math than fourth graders in 2022, per the National Assessment of Educational Progress analysis.
Roughly one-third of fourth graders could not identify whole numbers nor lines of symmetry in shapes, while nearly half could not determine familiar words using context clues.
