Educational Opportunity Project finds NH students' learning loss while Dover rebounds

Lisa Kennedy Sheldon

Guest Columnist, Seacoast Online

May 22, 2026, 5:06 a.m. ET

New Hampshire parents, grandparents, and community members, it's time to pay attention. A major new study just dropped some troubling news about how our kids are doing in school — and the results are hard to ignore.

On May 13, researchers from Stanford, Dartmouth, and Harvard released ten years of reading and math test scores for students in grades 3 through 8 across the country. Their project — called the Educational Opportunity Project — is designed to help parents, teachers, and lawmakers understand where students are succeeding and where they are struggling.

The short answer? A lot of kids are struggling.

Federal law requires every state to test students in grades 3 through 8 every year in reading and math. Those results are supposed to be public. What the new data shows is alarming: one in three school districts in the United States has dropped a full grade level in both reading and math since 2015. That means a student who should be reading at a fifth-grade level is reading like a fourth grader. That's a big deal.

The New York Times reviewed the data and broke it down by state and by individual school districts. You can even look up your own town. For New Hampshire, the picture is not pretty.

So what happened? Researchers point to several causes. In 2015, the federal "No Child Left Behind" law was relaxed, giving each state more control over its own testing rules. Around the same time, cell phones and social media became part of everyday life for kids. Then COVID hit, and schools shut down for months. When students came back, many were absent far more than before. And across the board, kids are reading fewer books.

Add it all together, and you have a recipe for falling behind.

As a grandmother who raised four kids in New Hampshire, I find these numbers deeply worrying. What kind of future are we building for our grandchildren if they can't read or do math at grade level? These are not small problems that fix themselves. Reading and math are the building blocks of everything else — science, history, careers, and daily life.

But here's the part that gives me hope.

Not every school district is failing. Some are actually doing better than others, and we can learn from them. One shining example right here in New Hampshire is the city of Dover. According to the Educational Opportunity Project, Dover is bouncing back from the damage caused by COVID faster than most other communities in the state and the country.

The credit goes in large part to Dover's school superintendent, Dr. Christine Boston, who has made targeted recovery a priority. Dover shows that with strong leadership and a clear plan, schools can turn things around. That's not just good news for Dover — it's a model for every town in New Hampshire.

We shouldn't wait for things to get worse before we act. School board meetings, town halls, and conversations with local leaders are all places where parents and community members can raise these issues. Ask your school district how your students compare. Ask what plans are in place to improve reading and math scores. Ask what's working — and what isn't.

Our kids deserve better than a slow slide backward. The data is clear. The problem is real. And the good news is, we already have a success story in our own backyard.

Let's learn from it.