How Washington students compare to the nation on math and reading

Washington has its own state test (the Smarter Balanced Assessment), but you can't use it to compare Washington to other states. The only test designed for that is NAEP — the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the "Nation's Report Card." NAEP is given to a representative sample of 4th- and 8th-graders in every state every two years.

The 2024 results, released in early 2025, put Washington in a statistical tie with the national public-school average across all four headline tests:

The within-state breakdown of those numbers, though, is huge. The 8th-grade math gap between Washington students from economically disadvantaged families and those who aren't is 36 points — which NAEP defines as roughly four years of academic growth. The Hispanic-White gap in 8th-grade math is 35 points, wider than it was in 2003 (22 points).

Washington used to be above average

In 2003, Washington's 8th-graders scored 5 points above the national average in math (281 vs. 276). That gap has closed: Washington's 8th-grade math score has dropped, and the rest of the country has caught up. In 2024, Washington (274) and the nation (272) are not significantly different.

How to read this

The takeaway from NAEP isn't "Washington is doing badly" — the state sits in the middle of a national pack that has lost ground since 2019. Washington's 8th-grade math score has fallen 12 points since 2019 (286 → 274), which by NAEP's own roughly-10-points-equals-a-year-of-growth heuristic is about a grade level of lost ground; the national public-school decline over the same period is similar. The takeaway is that Washington has lost its modest pre-pandemic edge, that 8th-graders specifically are sliding rather than recovering, and that the within-state gap between affluent and economically disadvantaged students — 36 points in 8th-grade math, or roughly four years of growth — is several times larger than any of the state-vs-state gaps you'll see in the news.