In an August 29 letter to state education chiefs, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it is discontinuing the National Blue Ribbon Schools program.

CAPE's role in the program has been to nominate private schools that meet the criteria for recognition. CAPE is pleased to recognize the schools nominated in 2025. This list can be found at the CAPE website.

From a National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) press release:

Average scores declined from 2019 to 2024 for the nation’s eighth-graders in science and twelfth-graders in mathematics and reading, according to the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—also known as The Nation’s Report Card. The 2024 results, released today by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), are the first post-pandemic NAEP scores for each assessment.

• Thirty-one percent of eighth-graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficient achievement level in 2024, which was four percentage points lower than in 2019.

• In 2024, the average grade 12 mathematics score was the lowest it has been since the current assessment began in 2005. Scores declined between 2019 and 2024 for all but the highest-performing students at the 90th percentile. With declining scores for lower-performing students at the 10th and 25th percentiles, the achievement gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students continued to widen and was larger in 2024 than in all previous assessments.

• Thirty-five percent of twelfth-graders performed at or above the NAEP Proficient achievement level in 2024, which was two percentage points lower than in 2019 and five percentage points lower than in 1992.

Private school participation did not achieve the necessary threshold for scores to be reported, though Catholic school scores were able to be reported for grade 8 science.