Gloomy First Look at Math, Literacy Test Scores for Grades 3-9

September 14, 2026 | njspotlightnews.org

More than half of New Jersey third-graders are not meeting literacy standards and an overwhelming majority of eighth-graders are not hitting math standards, signals that post-pandemic learning trends continued under the modernized state exams that were administered in the spring.

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NJ SEED: Today’s students are tomorrow’s workforce, managers and executives. Whatever the excuses or the amount of educational jargon employed, the fact is NJ students are not mastering reading and math to the extent necessary to succeed in a competitive economy. Federal aid is, in some cases, a disincentive to learning. Schools are punished with aid reductions if they fail to meet student “graduation-on-time “standards, otherwise known to the education world as Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (ACGR).