12 Charts That Defined U.S. Education in 2025: Vaccines, ESAs, Phone Bans, and Learning Loss

The year 2025 felt like both a reprise and a new chapter for American K–12 education. President Trump’s second term accelerated familiar priorities—expanded school choice, tighter limits on classroom content, and a reduced federal role—while new empirical studies clarified how those policy shifts and longer-term trends affected students, families, and schools.

Immigration Enforcement and Attendance

Heightened immigration enforcement coincided with sharp drops in school attendance. Stanford economist Thomas Dee found a 22% increase in absences across five Central Valley districts after a Border Patrol raid; extrapolated, that implied more than 700,000 lost student-learning days for the school year. Other studies in New England and Florida show similar patterns, particularly among English learners in areas with greater enforcement activity.

Pandemic Aftereffects: Stalled Recovery

More than five years after COVID-19 first hit, most districts have not returned to pre-pandemic achievement. The Education Recovery Scorecard combined state tests for 35 million students with NAEP results and reported that only 6% of elementary and middle-school students are in districts with math or reading at 2019 levels. On average, students remain about half a grade behind in both subjects, and reading scores saw little to no recovery between 2022 and 2024.

Longer-Running Causes of Learning Declines

Some researchers argue the slide predates COVID. Eric Hanushek estimated only about 25% of the decline in average reading since 2013 occurred during the pandemic, and James Wyckoff points to earlier forces—smartphones, post-recession funding cuts, and policy shifts—that likely contributed to falling achievement.

School Choice and Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)

Eight states adopted or expanded ESAs in 2025, widening eligibility for public funds to cover private tuition and other K–12 costs. Studies of the earliest universal-ESA states show modest but meaningful effects: private-school tuition rose roughly 5–10% and enrollment increased 3–4%. Arizona’s experience was sharper: elementary tuition climbed about 12%, and ESA participation jumped from ~12,000 students in 2021 to nearly 90,000 in 2024.

Phone Bans: Small Test Gains, Uneven Consequences

Thirty-seven states enacted phone restrictions or required district policies limiting phone use. Research on Florida bans found average standardized-test gains of roughly 1.1 percentile points two years after implementation, with larger effects for boys and older students. Improved attendance explained a substantial portion of the gains, but some groups—especially male and Black students—experienced a short-term rise in disciplinary incidents following bans.

College Readiness and Alarming Remedial Needs

A UC San Diego faculty group reported that > 12% of incoming 2025 freshmen failed to meet high-school math standards, and about 8% fell below middle-school benchmarks—figures many times higher than pre-pandemic levels. The working group highlighted both pandemic learning loss and weaker preparation standards, noting that many students placed in remedial courses arrived with high GPAs that masked gaps in readiness.

Teacher Pipeline and Profession Prestige

Interest in teaching has declined. An analysis of ~64 million college applications (2014–2025) found that males were about one-third as likely as females to report interest in the profession; Black applicants showed similarly lower interest compared with white applicants. Recommendation letters described aspiring teachers as higher in leadership and care but lower in measured academic promise and self-confidence.

Vaccination Rates and Public Health Politics

A June JAMA research letter using 32-state data documented a decline in MMR vaccination coverage since 2020: the national average fell from 93.92% to 91.26%, and roughly 1,600 of ~2,000 counties reported local declines. With the typical herd-immunity threshold around 95%, these trends raise public-health concerns, amplified by high-level political shifts that have questioned vaccine consensus.

Enrollment Shifts and Demographic Change

COVID-era churn redistributed students across sectors and communities. In Massachusetts, white and Asian enrollments dropped more than expected by fall 2024 (about 3.1% and 8.1% respectively), while Black and Hispanic enrollments were higher than predicted. Wealthier districts saw the steepest declines as some families left for private or charter schools that reopened earlier for in-person instruction.

Early Childhood: Montessori Evidence

A randomized study of ~600 preschool and kindergarten students found large benefits from public Montessori programs in executive function, reading, and short-term memory. Because of larger class sizes, the public Montessori option cost more than $13,000 less per child over three years versus conventional preschool—suggesting public Montessori could be a cost-effective avenue to sustain early gains.

Higher Education, Political Socialization, and CRT Debates

Research into undergraduate political change found students move leftward on average during college, with field of study a strong predictor: social-science and humanities majors shift left more than peers in the natural sciences, while economics/business students tilt right on economic issues. Meanwhile, a survey of high-school students found that over one-third reported hearing frequent classroom messages describing the U.S. as racist—while majorities also recalled lessons about racial progress—keeping debates over curriculum and critical race theory politically charged.

Bottom line: 2025 produced a mix of policy-driven shifts and evolving long-term trends. Some interventions (phone bans, Montessori programs) show modest benefits; others (expanded ESAs, heightened enforcement) are reshaping enrollment, costs, and equity. At the same time, persistent learning shortfalls and falling vaccination rates pose urgent challenges for policymakers and educators.