The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) said data from the Department of Education from 2023 to 2025 show that 70 percent of learners “continue to struggle with foundational skills” at the third grade.
Findings from the Early Language, Literacy, and Numeracy Assessment in 2024 showed that only a third of Grade 3 learners (30.52 percent) were considered “proficient” or “highly proficient.”
“This includes recognizing letters and sounds, reading common words, understanding short passages, counting on their own, or doing simple numerical problem solving,” the commission said.
To make matters worse, by the time students reach Grade 6, the EDCOM 2, citing the 2024 National Achievement Test, said that proficiency drops by another 11 percentage points to just 19.56 percent.
As they reach high school, the rates decline dramatically, with only 1.36 percent reaching “at least proficient” in Grade 10, and 0.4 at least proficient by Grade 12, meaning that only 14 in 1,000 students at Grade 10 and 4 in every 1,000 at Grade 12 “can demonstrate skills such as problem solving, managing and communicating information, and analyzing and evaluating data to create or formulate ideas.”
“This steep trajectory of underperformance is rooted in a failure to master foundational competencies during the earliest years of schooling,” the EDCOM said, adding that its findings indicate that nearly half of learners are “not reading at their respective grade levels by the end of Grade 3.”
The commission described this as a “disadvantage that hardens into a learning gap” of 5.5 years by the time a student reaches age 15.
“Because literacy is the essential gateway to numeracy and all other subjects, students who fall behind early find it increasingly impossible to comprehend more complex curricula in higher grades,” it also said.
Report after report on the state of the country’s basic education reveals a foundation that has been ignored and left to rot by its stewards, as illiteracy, ignorance, and the lack of critical thinking puts our future at risk. Our education officials that are trying to reverse this trajectory have so many problems that they probably do not know where to start. But based on these EDCOM findings, the foundation looks like a good place to focus on.*
