Tennessee Tops National Rankings in Post-Pandemic Math, Reading Recovery

NASHVILLE (May 13) — Tennessee is a national leader for academic recovery post-pandemic, today's release of the Education Scorecard shows. Among states measured, Tennessee ranks second in math and fourth in reading recovery. 

The Education Scorecard, which uses data from the 2022-25 school years, indicates that Tennessee students are virtually back to 2019 levels in math—one of the most complete recoveries in the country post-pandemic.

Statewide, there is progress on improving chronic absenteeism (i.e. students missing more than 10% of a school year), which has fallen from about 20% in 2022 to 18% in 2025. However, chronic absence rates still remain about 5 percentage points above pre-pandemic levels, indicating that this remains a priority going forward. 

"The pandemic was a mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement," said Professor Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. "The recovery of U.S. education has begun. But it's up to the rest of us to spread it."

The Education Scorecard is a collaboration between two of the nation’s leading education research centers: the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. The Education Scorecard report provides a high-resolution picture of where Tennessee students’ academic recovery stands, combining state test results for roughly 35 million grade 3–8 students nationwide with national assessment data to describe changes in local communities.