Pandemic schooling didn’t work for a lot of kids. While this is widely acknowledged, it helps to have data to back up the assumption. And now we have it, for 9‑year-olds at least.

Scores were released today for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is often called the nation’s report card. This data comes from a special long-term trend assessment of 9‑year-old students conducted this past January to March. Peggy Carr, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), noted today’s release is “the first nationally representative report comparing student achievement from before the pandemic to now.”

Unfortunately, the predictions about how kids were faring educationally were correct. Average scores fell 5 points in reading and 7 points in mathematics compared to 2020. This is the largest drop in reading since 1990, and the first ever statistically significant decline in mathematics.

NAEP scores are broken out in a number of ways to help get a better picture of how students are doing beyond average scores. Black students showed a larger score decrease (13 points) compared to white students (5 points), resulting in a widening of the racial score gap from 25 points in 2020 to 33 points in 2022. Hispanics were in between with an 8‑point drop. In reading, all three groups experienced a 6‑point score decrease.

Looking at students by performance percentiles shows declines at every level; but in both math and reading, scores for lower-performing students declined more than scores for higher-performing students.

So, what are we to make of these results?

In 2020 and 2021, the federal government sent $190 billion to states and school districts that was intended to help prevent and recoup from learning disruptions. As recently as May, the Wall Street Journal reported that more than $110 billion remained unspent. Yet students are clearly struggling.

The reality is that individual students have individual needs. Relying on a bureaucratic monopoly system to provide for those individual needs is unlikely to succeed. That’s why school choice is needed now more than ever. Education savings accounts, especially, seem like they were custom made to help address today’s challenges. Letting parents access state education funds for a variety of expenses—like tutoring, private school tuition, online classes, or services for children with special needs—will prioritize students’ needs in a way the system never can.

Test scores aren’t the “be all and end all” when it comes to education. But they are a tool that can help parents, teachers, and others evaluate progress. When it comes to a virtual monopoly, like the public school system, test scores may be the only way parents can attempt to hold schools accountable. But test score-based accountability will never work as well as letting parents choose where to send their children.

Families need educational options. That was true before the pandemic and it’s even truer now. It’s not enough to conduct assessments and bemoan poor results when they occur. We need to fund students instead of the system so parents can take education dollars to options that work for their children.