The Nation's Report Card delivered a split decision this week. New NAEP long-term trend results show 9-year-olds gaining ground in reading and math, with the biggest improvements coming from the lowest-performing students — a reversal of the pattern that defined the last decade. Officials pointed to the early-literacy push as a likely factor; more than 40 states have passed legislation on evidence-based reading instruction in the past five years. But 13-year-olds were flat, and their average reading score is no better than it was in 1971. "The lack of progress among 13-year-olds raises huge questions and ought to serve as a catalyst for change," said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board. The survey data attached to the test may be the most striking part of the release: just 14% of 13-year-olds say they read for fun almost every day, down from 27% in 2012. Full coverage is below, including The 74's breakdown and Matt Barnum's look at one of the release's stranger findings: girls' scores have fallen faster than boys', and researchers can't yet explain why.

Sticking with how we measure students: New York Magazine has a long read on gifted and talented programs that questions nearly every assumption behind them — from whether a cognitive test can capture intelligence at age 4 to a Vanderbilt study finding G&T enrollment moves reading scores by just 2 percentile points. Timely reading as Mayor Mamdani weighs the future of NYC's program.

Elsewhere: a new study covered by Education Week finds that closing schools rarely saves districts money — landing the same week Philadelphia reversed 340 planned staff cuts with $48 million in one-time city funding. And The Wall Street Journal reports on high school grads using a "backdoor" to attend their dream schools: moving to college towns, enrolling in online programs, and paying extra fees for access to the gym and football tickets.

Finally, a non-education plug: my colleague Jake New has a piece in Smithsonian on Steven Spielberg's lifelong fascination with UFOs, timed to tomorrow's release of "Disclosure Day." Jake traces the obsession back through five decades of filmmaking — including the real 1966 police chase of a UFO across eastern Ohio that Spielberg borrowed for an early scene in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" — to a single childhood night when Spielberg's father woke him up, drove him out past the suburbs, and laid out a blanket to watch a meteor shower. It's a great read.

— Thomas

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