WASHINGTON (AP) — The latest Nation’s Report Card is painting a dismal picture of math and reading achievement among American fourth and eighth graders despite a few bright spots.

Students in the nation’s capital, which faced multiple scandals in its public school system last year, made significant gains in both reading and math this year, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress. There also were major improvements in Mississippi, bucking a national trend that showed America’s eighth graders falling behind in math and reading and declines among fourth graders in math.

Nationwide, a little more than a third of eighth graders are proficient in reading and math. About a third of fourth graders are proficient in reading, while more than 40% of fourth graders are proficient in math.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the overall national results demonstrated a “student achievement crisis” that can’t be fixed by pouring more money into the traditional public school system. She renewed her pitch for expanded school choice, including her proposals for federal tax credits for donations made to groups offering scholarships for private schools, apprenticeships, school vouchers and greater reliance on privately run charter schools.

“Our children continue to fall further and further behind their international peers,” she said in a speech Wednesday. “If we embrace education freedom, American students can achieve. American students can compete.”

In Washington, schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee credited the improved performance by the city’s students to a number of factors, including the 2008 institution of universal free pre-K schooling for 3- and 4-year-olds living in D.C. That first crop of Washington preschoolers to benefit from the program would be in high school now, Ferebee said.

“Many of our students are getting a strong start in their learning,” said Ferebee, who also credited Washington’s commitment to comparatively high teacher salaries that “allow us to be competitive at a time when there’s a nationwide shortage of good teachers.”

The nationwide test is given to a random sampling of students in the fourth and eighth grades every two years.

Students made big gains in math in the 1990s and 2000s but have shown little improvement since then. Reading scores have risen a little since the tests began in 1992.

The decline in both reading and math performance among eighth grade students preparing to enter high school was especially concerning, officials said.

“Eighth grade is a transitional point in preparing students for success in high school, so it is critical that researchers further explore the declines we are seeing here, especially the larger, more widespread declines across states we are seeing in reading,” Peggy Carr, associate commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, told reporters during a conference call.

Both low- and high-achieving eighth graders slipped in reading, but the declines were generally worse for lower-performing students.

Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, said that it’s hard to find a coherent story across different state and local school districts, but that he hoped the results would “spur us to do something a little more vigorous.”

“We’ve just absolutely stalled,” Willingham said.

One theory is that decreased performance is a residue of economic decline and spending cuts by school districts.