PRESS RELEASE
May 13, 2026
Contact: Sam Stockwell
samuel_stockwell@gse.harvard.edu
617.495.0342
North Carolina Ranks 9th in Math and 22nd in Reading Recovery Among States, with Districts on the Rise Emerging Across the State
North Carolina’s math recovery ranks in the top 10 nationally but reading scores have continued to fall since 2022 and remain nearly .7 grade equivalents below 2019 levels.
Chronic absenteeism remains almost 10 percentage points above pre-pandemic levels despite significant improvement.
Districts like Beaufort, Stanly, and Wayne are outperforming their peers in both math and reading.
(May 13, 2026) In its fourth year, the Education Scorecard (a collaboration between the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, and faculty at Dartmouth College) is issuing its annual report on district-level student growth in math and reading.
The latest report provides a high-resolution picture of where North Carolina students’ academic recovery stands, combining state test results for roughly 35 million grade 3–8 students nationwide with national assessment data to describe changes in local communities. Here’s what we found:
North Carolina:
- North Carolina ranks 9th out of 38 states in academic growth in math and 22nd out of 35 states in reading between 2022 and 2025.
- In math, the average student is performing .29 grade equivalents above their 2022 level, but about .41 grade equivalents below 2019 levels. Some districts like Gaston, Buncombe, and Alamance-Burlington continue to lag behind 2019 levels.
- In reading, the average student is performing about .15 grade equivalents below their 2022 level, and .69 grade equivalents below 2019 levels. A number of districts like Alamance-Burlington, Rowan-Salisbury, and Winston-Salem/Forsyth continue to slip and remain over a full grade equivalent behind their 2019 levels.
- Several North Carolina districts are emerging as Districts on the Rise. These districts have shown unusual progress relative to similar districts in their own state. A core group of districts is excelling in both math and reading, with districts like Beaufort, Stanly, and Wayne outperforming their peers.
- Several other districts are rising relative to their peers in one subject—either math or reading. New Hanover and Person are leading the way in math performance, while Currituck, Moore, and Onslow are leading the way in reading.
- Statewide, there is some good news on chronic absenteeism (students missing more than 10% of a school year), which has fallen from over 32% in 2022 to around 25% in 2025. However, chronic absence rates still remain almost 10 percentage points above pre-pandemic levels.
- North Carolina received about $5.60 billion in federal pandemic relief for K–12 schools—roughly $3,700 per student. Our analysis finds that the gains in many high-poverty districts were driven by this federal support. Unfortunately, many middle-poverty districts (those with 30 to 70 percent of students receiving federal lunch subsidies) received little federal aid. Now that the federal relief is gone, North Carolina should focus school improvement dollars on the middle and higher poverty districts that remain behind their pre-pandemic levels.
“The pandemic was the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement,” said Professor Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. “The ‘learning recession’ started a decade ago, after policymakers switched off the early warning system of test-based accountability and social media took over children’s lives. In this report, we highlight the work of a small group of state leaders who have started digging out by changing how students learn to read, and 108 local school districts that are finding ways to get students learning again. The recovery of U.S. education has begun. But it’s up to the rest of us to spread it.”
