Can Chicago fourth graders read? How well? Are they doing better or worse than they were in 2019, before the pandemic?

People asking these questions often struggle to get a straight answer. Usually, the best way to tell what’s going on is to look at the data.

Unfortunately, even numbers can paint a misleading picture.

They did just that in 2024, when officials promoted a bit of unexpected good news — that Chicago students were experiencing a vibrant post-pandemic academic recovery.

That wasn’t exactly true. So what’s with the disconnect?

In 2024, a number of local headlines lauded an Education Recovery Project report on the state of education nationally that showed Chicago Public Schools ranked first among large urban school districts in reading recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic and 13th in math. That report relied heavily on Illinois state test results.

Following the release of the study in January 2024, Bogdana Chkoumbova, then chief education officer for Chicago Public Schools, credited the district’s investments with COVID aid money for the results. With that COVID cash, CPS added thousands of positions even as enrollment continued to decline. Its budget ballooned.

It didn’t take long after that good news had been amplified for questions to emerge about the analysis. Big questions. Six months later, many of the same researchers revisited the data and concluded some of their original recovery estimates for the nation were overstated because of “anomalously large” gains reported in Illinois and Ohio.

And meanwhile, national test data told a much different story about CPS’ performance.

National Assessment of Educational Progress data show CPS fourth-grade students lost ground academically between 2019 and 2024. Reading scores fell from 208 to 203 among fourth graders, and in math Chicago’s average score dropped from 232 to 223.

Meanwhile, the national average math score dropped only from 240 to 237, and the aggregate “large city average” score — which includes public school students from all cities in the nation with populations of 250,000 or more — dropped from 235 to 231.

As it turns out, not only was the narrative untrue that CPS’ academic recovery after COVID outpaced other big-city school districts. NAEP data show CPS lost ground relative to many of its urban peers.

As writers from the A City That Works blog put it, Chicago’s math declines put CPS on “the worst trajectory among any of the largest cities in the country.”

Meanwhile, some cities in fact had achieved gains, notably the public schools in Washington, D.C., and Denver.

The NAEP data don’t tell us what’s going wrong in Chicago. But they do tell us the status quo isn’t working.

We’ve all heard multiple theories about what’s at work.

COVID school closures set kids back.

The phones and iPads are to blame.

It’s social media.

And, perhaps most concerningly, too many kids just don’t go to class anymore.

Clearly, a combination of factors is at play, and we don’t pretend to have all the answers. We also don’t believe all of the responsibility rests on educators.

Still, in a world where many public schools are struggling to educate kids, we say leaders should control what they can.

Get back to basics on reading, especially with young students, as Southern states such as Mississippi and Louisiana have done by focusing relentlessly on early literacy, a phenomenon about which we’ve written before. From 2019 to 2024, Louisiana’s fourth-grade reading scores climbed six points, surpassing Illinois and even rising above the national average. No more resisting what works because of a red state versus blue state rivalry — follow the data.

Failing to acknowledge the problem will result in our youngest learners falling further behind. We believe our young people are capable of more, and that our public school system should serve as the great equalizer, leveling the playing field by giving kids a proper education. Sitting back and watching the system continue to fail is not an option. Pretending it’s performing well when it isn’t is even worse.

Nobody wants to throw stones at our kids and our teachers. We want both to succeed. Improvement starts with an honest assessment of reality.

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