So you need to look at complete data. This will give you that: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/2025/reading/scores-pe...

What you see is that before the anomaly year that was 2020, the scores were slightly lower as compared to 2012, but they were still not as low as early 2000s or before.

Another thing to notice is that the higher percentile performance largely remains flat but lower percentiles seem to be suffering from a drop.

While social media and phones could be a part of it, if they were the only factors, we wouldn’t see such a disparity between different percentiles. I suspect educational policy. No Child Left Behind (NCLB), no matter how controversial, coincided with the improvements in the scores. In 2012, a bunch of states were allowed to have more flexibility from NCLB. In 2015, it was replaced with Every Student Succeeds Act which allowed states to set their own standards. I think this was the single biggest contributor to the declining scores.