New York City reading scores drop sharply as leaders review results

City school leaders promised a review after New York City public school students in grades 3 through 8 saw reading test scores fall 6 percentage points, a drop that nearly wiped out the gains from last year’s state exams. The sharpest decline came in third grade, where reading scores fell 14 points, putting immediate pressure on families, teachers, and principals already working under a revamped literacy plan.

The setback landed in the middle of NYC Reads, the city’s overhaul of reading instruction built around the science of reading movement. The program had been promoted as a break from older methods, with schools changing how reading is taught and posting higher scores last year. Now the latest results are forcing educators to ask whether the short-term disruption of the new approach is driving the slide, or whether deeper instructional problems were already in place.

Officials in New York City said they were investigating the decline, and the city’s school leadership said it would review the results. That response matters because reading proficiency in the early grades shapes later performance across subjects, from middle school coursework to graduation prospects. A 14-point drop in third grade is especially stark because it hits just as children are moving from learning to read toward reading to learn.

The city’s results also arrived against a broader statewide pattern. The New York State Education Department’s preliminary 2025-26 assessment data showed reading proficiency fell across New York State even as math improved, suggesting the New York City decline was not an isolated wobble. The state department separately released 2024-25 assessment results in 2025, and the latest numbers will intensify scrutiny of how districts are using state exams to judge the literacy push.

For New York, the stakes are high because early literacy has long been a weak spot. Education Trust-New York warned in an April 2023 report that the state ranked poorly on early literacy indicators, a warning that gives the latest citywide drop added weight. If the redesigned reading strategy is going to recover lost ground, city officials will have to show not just that the program can work over time, but that it can do so fast enough to keep this year’s students from falling further behind.