The latest Education Recovery Scorecard, a national K-12 academic recovery analysis produced by researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth using state and national testing data from roughly 35 million students, shows Pennsylvania students remain significantly behind pre-pandemic performance and are recovering more slowly than the national average. Because not every state had complete testing data, rankings were based only on states with sufficient reporting. Among those states, Pennsylvania ranks 21 out of 38 in math recovery and 27 out of 35 in reading from 2022 to 2025.

Despite historic levels of K-12 funding, Pennsylvania students continue to struggle to regain lost academic ground post-pandemic. Students remain roughly .56 grade levels behind 2019 performance in math and .61 grade levels behind in reading, with reading scores continuing to decline since 2022. The report underscores a troubling reality: even after unprecedented resources were directed into K-12 public education, Pennsylvania is still producing too many students who are falling behind academically. This raises serious concerns about the long-term strength and competitiveness of the Commonwealth’s future workforce.

The results are available here.