Sean Reardon

In fact, you wouldn't really know there was a pandemic effect if you just looked at the last 10 or 12 years of test scores.

There's been just a steady kind of decline.

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The annual report is called the Education Scorecard, and it comes from researchers at Stanford, Harvard, and Dartmouth.

Pouring over decades of math and reading scores, the researchers say America's students hit a learning recession, not during COVID-19, but around 2013.

Stanford researcher Sean Reardon.

As for why learning got so derailed, the researchers have two theories.

One, a big federal education law was essentially abandoned around 2013, meaning school leaders started feeling less pressure to improve.

And two, social media use among U.S.

youth started to skyrocket.

Corey Turner, NPR News.