New Hampshire Students Outpace Nation In Reading, Math According To Stanford Scorecard

NEW HAMPSHIRE — Granite State students are performing better than their peers nationwide in reading and math, according to a new interactive map from Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project.

The project analyzed third- through eighth-grade test scores from more than 5,000 school districts in 38 states. Researchers at Harvard and Dartmouth joined Stanford on the Education Scorecard project, which compares average academic achievement across states and lets users filter results by socioeconomic status and demographics.

The findings place New Hampshire among the stronger-performing states in a national picture that remains uneven. States in the Northeast and parts of the Upper Midwest generally posted stronger test scores, while many Southern and Southwestern states lagged behind. Researchers say those patterns reflect long-standing disparities tied to poverty, school funding, housing segregation, and access to educational resources. Granite State students outperformed their counterparts in every other Northeast state except Massachusetts and New Jersey.

The report also found U.S. students remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading levels, reflecting what researchers described as a long-running “reading recession” that was worsened by the pandemic. Annual national math and reading assessments measure foundational skills that schools and policymakers consider critical to students’ future academic and professional success.

The Stanford Educational Opportunity Project describes its database as the first comprehensive national effort to measure educational opportunity using standardized test scores from millions of public-school students. In its research overview, the project states, “Educational opportunity in America is still deeply uneven,” emphasizing that academic outcomes are shaped by factors inside and outside the classroom.

The scorecard adds to growing evidence that where a child lives and the socioeconomic conditions surrounding them remain strong predictors of academic performance. The map paints a familiar yet troubling picture of educational inequality nationwide, even in places with stronger overall averages.

Researchers say state-level performance can hide wide gaps within individual states. Wealthier suburban districts often outperform nearby lower-income urban and rural communities by large margins, according to the report.

The findings come as educators across the country continue to address learning loss and widening achievement gaps after the COVID-19 pandemic. The project’s creators said they hope the map will help policymakers, educators, and families better understand how geography, income, and opportunity intersect in American schools.

» Go here for the interactive map.