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, according to the latest results of an exam known as the nation’s report card.

The findings are yet another setback for U.S. schools and reflect the myriad challenges that have upended education, from pandemic school closures to a youth mental health crisis and high rates of chronic absenteeism. 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 considered one of the best gauges of the academic progress of the U.S. school system. The most recent exam was administered in early 2024 in every state, testing fourth- and eighth-grade students on math and reading.

Something incredible happened at a Dairy Queen drive-thru in Brainerd, Minnesota: People in over 900 cars took part in a “pay it forward” chain.

It began the morning of Thursday, December 3, 2020, with a single kind act from one man and continued into Friday and Saturday. The first customer paid for his order and that of the people in the car behind him. The next patron followed suit. Eventually, over two and a half days, over $10,000 had been spent in this chain of generosity, the store manager told CNN.

“There’s all different types of ways to help people,” the manager said. “I think this touched a lot of people that we didn’t even know it touched, deeper than we know. And you don’t know what’s going on in a person’s life.”