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Across the country, the U.S. is experiencing a reading recession — a slide in the reading skills of students that predates pandemic school disruption, but there are several relative bright spots in California that include the Modesto, Compton and Los Angeles school districts, researchers say.

Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth scholars analyzed state test scores from third to eighth grade for more than 5,000 school districts in 38 states, allowing comparisons across school districts and states in a national Education Scorecard.

What they found was sobering: Only five states plus the District of Columbia had meaningful growth in reading test scores from 2022 to 2025, the period when schools faced the challenge of recovering from pandemic-era setbacks. Like most states, California reading scores declined.

The results in math were better, with most states showing improvement over that period.

Researchers were able to pull adequate data from 35 states to compare reading scores, with California ranking 29th in academic growth. California ranked 19th in academic growth among the 38 states with adequate math data.

One way to gauge the the progress is to look at how much students learned in a typical year of instruction.

Nationally, students remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading scores from 2019 and only slightly better in math.

In California, students are about a third of a year behind pre-pandemic levels in reading. In math it is about a quarter of a year behind, the study showed. A quarter-year of instruction translates to about 45 school days or about nine weeks of the school year.

Reading test scores have been falling since 2013 for eighth-graders and 2015 for fourth-graders — well before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also called the Nation’s Report Card, which tests a sample of students from across the country.