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American eighth graders posted their lowest science scores since 2009 on a major national test, one more indication of the hit that learning took during the pandemic.
Average scores declined for all students, but the decrease was particularly pronounced for low-performing students, according to results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, science test released Tuesday. The gap between high and low performers was the largest it has been in the history of the test.
In addition, more students scored below the basic level and fewer students scored above the proficient level.
These trends were also reflected in national math and reading scores from fourth and eighth graders during the same time period in early 2024, and in other recent math and science results from U.S. and international tests.
Scores for lower performing students actually started to decline before the pandemic, for reasons that are not entirely clear. But the gaps between students doing well in school and those struggling are now larger.
As in math, a gender gap in science test scores that had largely closed before the pandemic has widened, with girls’ scores declining more steeply.
“These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted, focused action to accelerate student learning,” said Matt Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.
One bright spot was scores for English learners. In other standardized tests, English learners seemed particularly hard hit by pandemic disruptions and time spent out of school, but their NAEP science scores increased an average of 6 points.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the results “confirm a devastating trend” and show federal spending has not improved education.
The test results come as the Trump administration has cut funding for science education and is reducing the role of the federal government in sharing best practices and improving teacher training. They also come amid significant turmoil for the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees NAEP administration. NCES and the Institute of Education Science were decimated by U.S. Department of Education layoffs and contract cancellations. These science scores originally were supposed to be released in June.
These eighth graders were in fourth grade when schools closed in March 2020 and experienced an especially disrupted fifth grade year marked by remote learning and quarantines. Since then, schools have been under intense pressure to improve reading and math test scores.
Compared with their pre-pandemic peers, students who took the science test in 2024 were less likely to report engaging in inquiry-based learning, such as using evidence from an experiment to explain why something happens. They were also less likely to report they enjoyed their science classes, and less likely to say they felt confident in their abilities.
But students who did well on the test were more likely to say they had the opportunity to do hands-on learning and more likely to enjoy science class.
NAEP not fully aligned with many states’ standards
Some 23,000 eighth graders in about 600 public and private schools took the science test between January and March 2024. It was the first NAEP science test administered since the pandemic. Students were tested in physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences. Average scores declined 3 to 4 points in each content area.
Scores are reported on a scale from zero to 300. A score of 170 is considered NAEP Proficient, a higher level of competency than the proficiency bar on most state standardized tests. A score of 141 is considered NAEP Basic. A student who scores at the basic level might recognize kinetic energy, while a student who scores at the proficient level could describe how kinetic energy changes when an object is in motion.
In 2024, just 29% of students scored proficient, a similar share as in 2009 and a decline of four percentage points from 2019. Some 38% of students scored below NAEP Basic, a five percentage point increase from 2019 and the highest share since the current framework was adopted in 2009.
The NAEP test provides a snapshot of student learning, but it is not designed to answer why students seem to be learning less.
Science educators who spoke with Chalkbeat without having seen the NAEP results said they are just one measure of student learning, but that the trends NAEP identifies are worth paying attention to.
More than 40 states now have science standards and use curriculum that are based to some degree on Next Generation Science Standards, which emphasize inquiry and building conceptual understanding over learning specific sets of facts. NAEP is not yet fully aligned with Next Generation standards but does include questions based on scenarios that require students to show scientific reasoning.
Science education is less dependent on sequential learning than, for example, math, where each unit builds on skills learned in the previous unit, said Christine Royce, a past president of the National Science Teachers Association and a professor at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. The Next Generation standards also provide avenues to circle back and rediscover concepts students may have missed, she said.
But engaging students in doing science to learn science, as called for in the Next Generation standards, takes time that often is in short supply, said Amanda L. Townley, executive director of the National Center for Science Education.
It doesn’t help that the Trump administration has cut funding for museums, public media, and other institutions that often partnered with schools to support science education, she said, or that even topics like vaccines and infectious disease have become politically contentious.
Students still need a grounding in the basics of science and scientific thinking to do more advanced work in middle school, both Royce and Townley said.
A 2018 report found that the average elementary student gets just 20 minutes of science instruction a day, compared with 60 minutes of math and 90 minutes of literacy. Among older elementary students, just 35% had science every day of the school year.
That means schools are missing out on a key window when kids have a natural curiosity that could be harnessed for science, said Royce, who helps train future science educators.
Elementary school, she said, is “where kids have questions, where they ask why. They really want to know.”
Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.
