The latest findings by researchers at Harvard and Stanford are based on 2024-25 state test results, combined with national assessment data, to pinpoint trends in learning.
Students in Florida are falling behind in reading and math, compared to other states, and one in three children miss too much school, according to a nationwide report called the Education Scorecard, released on Wednesday.

While some states made post-pandemic gains in reading, Florida students’ reading ability declined the most in the last four years. The average Florida student is more than half a grade level behind where the average student was in 2022.

That downward trend shows scores are “declining rapidly,” said co-author Sean Reardon, a professor at Stanford University.

Beginning in the fall of 2026, all Florida middle and high school students will be required to take a yearly social studies class on the history of communism. The curriculum has already received the stamp of approval from the conservative Heritage Foundation (the group behind Project 2025), a right-wing nonprofit organization called the National Association of Scholars (NAS) and a NAS spinoff called the Civics Alliance, and it follows on the heels of the state’s 2022 imposition of Victims of Communism Day, which is now held every November 7 to mark the start of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The annual commemoration requires schools to provide a minimum of 45 minutes of instruction on “the horrors of communism” and the “destructiveness of Marxism-Leninism.” Programming is also expected to inculcate “an appreciation for the founding principles of the American republic.” What these principles are is not specified.

In 2024, the board removed sociology from a list of six “state core” classes students could use to fulfill their social science requirement. Earlier this year, Florida began requiring the use of a new state-approved textbook in sociology courses. The new version omits topics on race, gender and sexuality present in an earlier, much longer version of the text.

“What we have are nonacademics trying to control a curriculum and impose it on academics, which just feels bizarre and even surreal,” Levenson said about the series of decisions.

The motion to remove sociology from general education wasn’t listed on the meeting agenda and wasn’t open for public comment. Rather, it was a surprise vote initiated by Ray Rodrigues, the State University System chancellor.

The Florida House gave final approval Thursday, the second-to-last-day of the scheduled regular legislative session, to a package formulated in the aftermath of the shootings at Florida State University last year that would arm professors.

The House approval followed the Senate’s Wednesday.

In a Faculty in the South survey conducted by various conferences of the American Association of University Professors, 31% of Florida respondents said they have applied for a job outside of Florida since 2023. That number was 25% among all survey respondents in the South.

The same, 31% of Florida respondents, said they plan to seek employment in another state during the next hiring cycle.