But many children were just making up ground lost early in the decade, when reading scores declined for reasons that are not clear.

While the overall average scores declined, the subgroups of students increased.

In third grade, scores declined 5.27 points after the change to 14.20 percent.

But third-grade scores had declined 8.21 points the year before.

If scores in the rest of the state also declined, he said, that would be a red flag.

New York was the only state in the country in which the scores declined.

Across most types of applications, scores declined the more often software was released.

I predict the scores will decline further next year, at least not recover.

Those scores have been declining for nearly four decades.

By contrast, the scores last year declined by 1 percentage point from 1989.