70% of fourth graders can’t read proficiently—and it’s not just COVID making kids fall behind

According to a report on childhood wellbeing published Monday by the Anne E. Casey Foundation, children are recording worsening educational attainment scores across virtually every indicator. The findings suggest the U.S. education system has yet to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on learning models, and represent a warning sign that America’s next generation of leaders may be primed to enter the workforce at a distinct disadvantage compared to their elders.

“Today’s children are tomorrow’s workforce,” Leslie Boissiere, vice president of external affairs at the foundation who oversaw the report, told Fortune. “When we invest in the well-being of kids today, that’s investing in the future of the economy tomorrow.”

The foundation’s report tracked a general decline in childhood wellbeing in the U.S. between 2019 and 2024, measured across four domains: education, health, family and community, and economic wellbeing.

Education was the worst performer of the four. While on-time high school graduation rates have improved, every other indicator pointed negative. The sharpest declines were in foundational skills, with 70% of fourth graders—at least two million kids—unable to read proficiently, up from 66% in 2019, and 73% of eighth graders failing at math proficiency, compared to 67% in 2019. Attendance is also falling among preschool-age children, with only 46% of kids aged 3 and 4 in school, down from 48% five years prior.

“That’s a critical time for brain development and for learning for children,” Boissiere said. Reading and math ability in particular are “key determinants to whether or not someone is going to graduate on time from high school, and that’s what sets children on the trajectory to do well in school, work, and life.”

The foundation’s report largely pinned the cratering performance on the pandemic. School closures, distance learning, and the general climate of anxiety and stress for young children has had a “long tail” on early childhood educational outcomes, Boissiere said. 

Research from Harvard University in 2023 found that the average public school student between the third and eighth grade lost the equivalent of half a year in math education and a quarter of a year of learning in reading, with students in some parts of the U.S. suffering even larger setbacks. Even in the years since, schools have largely resumed the same curriculum without targeted programs to help struggling kids catch up, leaving many young students behind.

The declines aren’t just confined to early education. High schoolers are also seeing historic declines in reading, math, and science proficiency. As the crop of middle schoolers who bore the brunt of COVID-related learning disruptions now go on to higher education, colleges are sounding the alarm about humanities students being unable to read single sentences or think critically, or STEM majors now stumped by middle school math problems.

But the issues with learning in the U.S. likely go beyond the pandemic alone. The same Harvard researchers that studied COVID-related disruptions to education have warned the “learning recession” has been underway for at least a decade. The downturn started with the ubiquity of smartphones, social media, and various forms of educational technology that have proved inefficient, with the pandemic acting as an accelerant. As schools grapple with how to police AI use among students and how to use it educationally, researchers also warn the technology could compound learning difficulties by offloading students’ cognitive efforts.

Declining educational attainment in early childhood doesn’t happen in isolation. Chronic absenteeism while young kids’ brains are still developing lowers the chances people will continue with education as they grow older, and raises the likelihood of economic difficulties in adulthood, creating a dangerous loop. The Anne E. Casey foundation’s report found 1.2 million teens, around 7%, are now neither in school nor working, up from 6% in 2019.

“We know that children have a hard time focusing and learning when they don’t have enough food to eat, or when their families are facing financial strain,” Boissiere said. “We really have to focus on how other aspects of child wellbeing affect children’s ability to learn and to thrive in school.”