> There’s a much broader trend afoot. This spring, Paul Peterson and Michael Hartney showed that red states (as defined by 2024 presidential election votes) are overtaking their blue counterparts academically. In 2019, blue states had higher average NAEP scores on all four major tests (4th and 8th grade reading and math). By 2024, red states had taken the lead in three of the four.
There it is.