Washington NAEP results and rank, 2013-2024

What this dataset measures

Superintendent Chris Reykdal said in June 2025 that schools have less money per student after inflation than six years earlier and that about three quarters of students are at grade level. The Washington Policy Center said about 60% of students are not on track in math and 50% in English, and that Washington's fourth-grade NAEP math rank fell from 10th to 27th. Each claim depends on which money is counted, which price index is used, and which test cut line is used, so the dataset keeps every variant side by side.

Geography

Washington, United States

Unit of observation

Statewide value per school year, per test year and subject, or per NAEP year, grade and subject

Update cadence

Annual; refresh when OSPI publishes the 2025-26 financial summary (about December 2026) and Census publishes fiscal 2025 school finance data.

Curator

FactHub Research Team

Curated data tables

Washington NAEP results and rank, 2013-2024

Public-school averages for grades 4 and 8 in math and reading, Washington's rank among the 50 states by unrounded average, and how many states scored significantly higher, not significantly differently, or lower.

Unit of observation: Subject, grade and year

naep-washington.csv text/csv · 1.6 KB (1,642 bytes)

All 24 rows 10 columns Download the file

All 24 rows

subject	grade	year	wa_mean NAEP scale points	national_public_mean NAEP scale points	rank_of_50_unrounded	states_significantly_higher states	states_not_significantly_different states	states_significantly_lower states	jurisdictions_significantly_higher
mathematics	4	2013	246.29	241.18	10	3	17	29	MA MN NH
mathematics	4	2015	244.98	239.85	8	3	18	28	MA MN NH
mathematics	4	2017	241.7	239.16	13	9	19	21	DS FL IN MA MN NE NH NJ VA WY
mathematics	4	2019	239.51	240	26	14	27	8	CT DS FL IN MA MN ND NE NH NJ PA TX UT VA WY
mathematics	4	2022	234.93	234.86	27	10	27	12	DS FL IA MA ND NE NH SD UT WI WY
mathematics	4	2024	237.59	237.3	27	4	35	10	DS FL MA NH WY
mathematics	8	2013	289.96	283.62	7	5	12	32	MA MN NH NJ VT
mathematics	8	2015	286.51	281.28	12	5	21	23	DS MA MN NH NJ VT
mathematics	8	2017	289.13	281.96	6	3	14	32	DS MA MN NH
mathematics	8	2019	285.81	280.99	12	3	19	27	DS MA MN NJ
mathematics	8	2022	276.08	273.13	18	7	19	23	DS ID MA NJ SD UT WI WY
mathematics	8	2024	273.67	272.23	25	14	18	17	DS ID IN MA MN MT ND NE NH NJ OH SD UT WI WY
reading	4	2013	225.05	220.67	15	4	25	20	CT DS MA MD NH
reading	4	2015	225.89	221.36	14	3	27	19	DS MA NH VT
reading	4	2017	223.12	220.81	21	7	25	17	CT DS FL MA NH NJ VA WY
reading	4	2019	219.69	219.44	27	9	34	6	CO CT DS FL MA NH NJ UT VA WY
reading	4	2022	216.69	216.11	23	6	37	6	CO DS FL MA NH NJ WY
reading	4	2024	215.72	214.27	18	5	34	10	CO DS IN MA NH WY
reading	8	2013	272.04	266.02	8	2	13	34	DS MA NJ
reading	8	2015	267.25	263.99	21	5	25	19	CT DS MA NH NJ VT
reading	8	2017	271.62	265.33	7	1	16	32	DS MA
reading	8	2019	266.28	262	11	2	26	21	DS MA NJ
reading	8	2022	261.54	259.11	14	2	32	15	DS MA NJ
reading	8	2024	259.27	256.66	18	4	32	13	CO DS MA NH NJ

10 field definitions

Field	Type	Meaning	Units	Value type
subject	string	mathematics or reading.	—	observed
grade	integer	Grade 4 or 8.	—	observed
year	integer	Test year.	—	observed
wa_mean	number	Washington public-school average scale score, unrounded.	NAEP scale points	observed
national_public_mean	number	National public-school average.	NAEP scale points	observed
rank_of_50_unrounded	integer	1 plus the number of the 50 states with a higher unrounded average. DC and Defense Department schools excluded.	—	derived
states_significantly_higher	integer	States (not counting Defense Department schools) whose average was significantly higher than Washington's, per NAEP's significance test.	states	observed
states_not_significantly_different	integer	States not significantly different from Washington.	states	observed
states_significantly_lower	integer	States significantly lower than Washington.	states	observed
jurisdictions_significantly_higher	string	Postal codes of jurisdictions significantly higher; DS is Defense Department schools.	—	observed

Supporting files

Source snapshots, manifests, quality reports, documentation, and other materials used to produce or review this release.

• analysis-results.json Documentation · application/json · 16.7 KB (17,082 bytes)

  Structured results of the saved analyses, computed from the curated tables.

Sources

1. OSPI Financial Reporting Summary 2024-25, Section One General Fund expenditures per pupil, ten-year comparison (Table Two)

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington state government public record. Public record; values reproduced with attribution.

   Reliability: Government. Compiled by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction from every district's year-end F-196 financial report. OSPI is Reykdal's agency, but these are audited accounting totals, not advocacy figures.

2. OSPI 10-year F-196 data, 2015-16 to 2024-25 (spreadsheet) Statewide General Fund revenue by source, expenditures by program, and annual average FTE enrollment

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington state government public record. Public record; values reproduced with attribution.

   Reliability: Government. Same district year-end reports as the summary, by revenue code and program. Revenue codes 1000-2000 are local and 3000-4000 are state; federal is 5000-6000.

3. U.S. Census Bureau, 2024 Annual Survey of School System Finances, summary tables Washington per-pupil current spending, fiscal 2019-2024 (Table 20)

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted.

   Reliability: Government. Federal survey of every state's school finances on a common definition: current spending excluding capital outlay and debt service, per pupil in fall enrollment. Independent of OSPI's own reports.

4. U.S. Census Bureau, 2019 Annual Survey of School System Finances, summary tables Washington per-pupil current spending, fiscal 2014-2019 (Table 20)

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted.

   Reliability: Government. Earlier edition of the same federal survey.

5. BLS Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, U.S. city average (CUUR0000SA0) National price index for inflation adjustment

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted.

   Reliability: Government. Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly consumer price index, not seasonally adjusted.

6. BLS Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue (CUURS49DSA0) Seattle-area price index, the index OSPI uses

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted.

   Reliability: Government. Bureau of Labor Statistics bimonthly consumer price index for the Seattle metro area.

7. BEA price index for state and local government consumption expenditures and gross investment (via FRED B829RG3A086NBEA) Price index for what state and local governments buy

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted.

   Reliability: Government. Bureau of Economic Analysis annual implicit price index for state and local government purchases, mostly employee compensation; 2017 = 100.

8. OSPI Report Card Assessment Data 2018-19 (data.wa.gov 4h5k-di3v) Statewide spring 2019 test results by level

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington state open data. Open data; reproduced with attribution.

   Reliability: Government. OSPI's official assessment file; statewide All Students rows for all grades.

9. OSPI Report Card Assessment Data 2023-24 (data.wa.gov 5i5h-c5pk) Statewide spring 2024 test results by level, the latest results when Reykdal spoke

   Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington state open data. Open data; reproduced with attribution.

   Reliability: Government. OSPI's official assessment file; statewide All Students rows for all grades, with counts of students expected and tested.

10. OSPI Report Card Assessment Data 2024-25 (data.wa.gov qh4i-zmju) Statewide spring 2025 test results by level

    Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington state open data. Open data; reproduced with attribution.

    Reliability: Government. OSPI's official assessment file.

11. OSPI Report Card Assessment Data 2025-26 (data.wa.gov fusr-6kv7) Statewide spring 2026 test results by level

    Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington state open data. Open data; reproduced with attribution.

    Reliability: Government. OSPI's official assessment file.

12. data.wa.gov Report Card Assessment Data series (2021-22 and 2022-23 files) Statewide spring 2022 and 2023 test results by level

    Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington state open data. Open data; reproduced with attribution.

    Reliability: Government. Catalog listing of OSPI's yearly assessment files on the state open-data portal.

13. OSPI, 2025 assessment data press conference slides (September 2025) OSPI's definitions of Level 2 and Level 3 and its headline Level 2+ shares

    Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington state government public record. Public record; quoted with attribution.

    Reliability: Party to the dispute. Has a stake in this finding. Reykdal's agency; its framing of Level 2 as grade-level knowledge is one side of the dispute. The numbers match the data.wa.gov files.

14. NAEP Data Service and NCES State Snapshot reports, Washington Washington and state NAEP averages and significance tests, 2013-2024

    Retrieved November 3, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Unrestricted.

    Reliability: Government. National Center for Education Statistics. Same test in every state, so it is independent of Washington's own test. Averages came from the NAEP Data Service API and were checked against the State Snapshot reports.

15. OSPI press conference slides, September 10, 2026 OSPI's own chart of state and local funding per student after inflation

    Retrieved November 3, 2026. Washington state government public record. Public record; quoted with attribution.

    Reliability: Party to the dispute. Has a stake in this finding. OSPI uses this chart to ask the Legislature for more money. It shows $18,315 in 2018-19 and $17,733 in 2024-25, adjusted with the Seattle CPI.

16. Washington Policy Center, "Reykdal confronted by state data, blames partisanship for bad results" (David Boze, June 20, 2025) WPC's transcript of the FOX 13 interview and WPC's own test-score claim

    Retrieved November 3, 2026. Copyrighted; short quotations for fact-checking. Quoted briefly with attribution.

    Reliability: Party to the dispute. Has a stake in this finding. WPC is a party to the dispute. Its transcript is the only text of the interview we found; the video has no captions.

17. Washington Policy Center, "OSPI scrubs website of key data" (Todd Myers, October 8, 2025) WPC's NAEP ranking claim

    Retrieved November 3, 2026. Copyrighted; short quotations for fact-checking. Quoted briefly with attribution.

    Reliability: Party to the dispute. Has a stake in this finding. WPC is a party to the dispute.

18. FOX 13 Seattle, "One-on-one with Washington superintendent of public instruction Chris Reykdal" (video, June 17, 2025) Original interview

    Retrieved November 3, 2026. Copyrighted broadcast; linked, not reproduced. Not redistributed.

    Reliability: News report. The original video. The page has no transcript or captions.

19. Key Peninsula News, "Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal seeks third term" (October 2, 2024) Earlier Reykdal statement of the same inflation claim

    Retrieved November 3, 2026. Copyrighted; short quotations for fact-checking. Quoted briefly with attribution.

    Reliability: News report. Community newspaper interview with Reykdal during his 2024 reelection campaign.

Limitations and reproducibility

Reproducible from public sources: Every nominal value is copied from an OSPI, Census, data.wa.gov or NAEP file named in sources. Real values multiply the nominal value by the ratio of the 2024-25 school-year price index to that year's school-year price index. School-year price indexes are July-June means of monthly U.S. CPI-U, the mean of the six bimonthly Seattle-area CPI-U readings from August to June, and the mean of the two calendar-year values of the BEA state and local government price index. Test shares use OSPI's denominator: students reaching a level on Smarter Balanced or the alternate test (WA-AIM), divided by all students expected to test.

• Money per student uses OSPI's annual average full-time-equivalent enrollment; Census uses fall enrollment, so the two series differ slightly.
• General Fund spending excludes construction, debt service and transportation vehicle funds.
• Federal COVID relief (ESSER) raised spending from 2020-21 to 2023-24; a separate measure removes the main COVID program codes, but some first-round relief may sit in other codes.
• The Seattle-area CPI tracks consumer prices in one metro area and rose faster than national prices (about 30% vs 25% from 2018-19 to 2024-25). School costs are mostly salaries set by statewide formulas.
• Census fiscal 2025 data were not yet released, so the Census series ends in 2023-24.
• Math Level 2+ for 2024 computes to 62.8% from rounded published percentages; OSPI's count-based figure is 62.9%.
• NAEP ranks use unrounded averages among the 50 states; most neighboring ranks are statistical ties.