New results from a national exam find that America's children have continued to lose ground on reading skills in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and have made little improvement in math. The findings are yet another setback for U.S. schools and reflect the myriad challenges that have upended education. The national exam results also show growing inequality: While the highest-performing students have started to regain lost ground, lower-performing students are falling further behind. Given every two years to a sample of America's children, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is seen as one of the best gauges of the academic progress of the U.S. school system.