While some portions of the newly released Nation’s Report Card showed Louisiana made gains in reading proficiency since the pandemic, the same could not be said for mathematics. Conducted by a branch of the U. S. Department of Education, the Nation’s Report Card typically assesses fourth- and eighth-grade students across the country on reading and math skills every other year, but until this year it hadn’t been administered since 2019 because of COVID. Louisiana’s fourth graders dropped an average of three points in the math assessment compared to 2019, while eighth graders saw a six-point decline. That’s on a 500-point scale, though the average scores of all 50 states were somewhere in the 200’s. Louisiana’s average fourth grade score of 229 was good for 43rd in the nation, while in eighth grade the average score of 266 was 44th.