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(NEW YORK) — High school students, especially 12th graders, are reading and learning math and science at historic lows, according to a new report from the National Assessment of Education Progress.

The new report, known as the Nation’s Report Card, was released Monday by the National Center for Education Statistics, or NCES, and the Department of Education. It is the first nation’s report card to be released since the coronavirus pandemic.

The report shows almost half of high school seniors are now testing below basic levels in math and reading, and approximately 35% are at or above a proficient reading level, while 32% of them had a below “basic” reading proficiency.

By comparison, 37% of high school seniors were reading at or above proficiency in the 2019 report card, and 40% were at or above reading proficiency in 1992.

In math, the report shows only about 22% of 12th graders performing at or above proficiency standards.

The report card also looked at eighth graders and their science ability and found 31% of them were performing at proficient or above proficient standards.

Another key issue the report highlighted was absenteeism, with the number of absent students in schools rising among all age groups since the pandemic.

According to the report card, in 2024, approximately 31% of 12th graders specifically reported missing at least three or more days of school in the previous month, an increase from 2019, when the rate was 26%.

Educators and policymakers say it is critical for parents to stay engaged and regularly check in with students and their teachers about assignments and any absences.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the report’s findings “devastating” in a statement Tuesday.

“Today’s NAEP results confirm a devastating trend: American students are testing at historic lows across all of K-12,” McMahon said, adding, “Despite spending billions annually on numerous K-12 programs, the achievement gap is widening, and more high school seniors are performing below the basic benchmark in math and reading than ever before.”

The Department of Education has notably been cutting staff and services under McMahon’s leadership, including the researchers who produced the new nation’s report card. President Donald Trump has also tasked McMahon with dismantling her department altogether and handing control over education agendas to the states.

“Success isn’t about how much money we spend, but who controls the money and where that money is invested,” she said Tuesday.

Marty West, a professor of education at Harvard University, told ABC News the results are concerning because only a portion of American students are getting the education they deserve.

“What troubles me most about the patterns that we’re seeing is that the declines are largest for our lowest-performing students — those in the bottom quarter of the distribution. Meanwhile, high-scoring students – those at the 90th percentile are doing just about as well as ever,” West said. “So, this really highlights the extent with which American schools right now are really only preparing some students for success at the post-secondary level.”

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(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — A Tennessee man pleaded guilty Tuesday to plotting to using a weapon of mass destruction in a neo-Nazi-inspired plot to destroy an energy facility near Nashville, the Justice Department announced.

Skyler Philippi, 24, was arrested last November over his plans to attack Nashville’s power grid with a drone armed with explosives. According to the DOJ, charging documents showed Philippi conducted extensive research into how such an attack could serve to “shock the system,” as he relayed to one FBI confidential source who became aware of his plotting.

The FBI first began investigating Philippi last June after a confidential source who was in touch with him reported to the FBI his desire to commit a mass shooting at a YMCA near Columbia, Tennessee, according to prosecutors. Philippi also repeatedly espoused his adherence to white supremacist and accelerationist ideologies which promote the idea that a destabilizing terrorist attack on something like the nation’s energy sectors could serve to incite unrest that leads to civil war, prosecutors said.

“I definitely want to hit Nashville, like one hundred percent, I want to get Nashville,” Philippi said in one meeting recorded by undercover agents, according to charging documents. “I also know Louisville pretty g—— well, since I lived there. I spent about five months scouting out every single place [power station] and even coming up with a game plan to hit it as fast as I could. I had whole maps made, printed out on paper, to actually do that.”

In September of last year, Philippi and undercover FBI employees drove to an electrical substation he had allegedly researched previously. While in transit, Philippi ordered what he believed would be the equivalent of C-4 explosives from the informants, according to charging documents.

During their recon mission to the substation, agents recorded Philippi stating, “Holy s—. This will go up like a f—— Fourth of July firework,” charging documents said.

In a meeting days before his arrest, Philippi participated in a Nordic ritual and told the undercover agents “this is where the New Age begins,” and that it was “time to do something big” that would be remembered “in the annals of history,” according to the charging documents.

Philippi then drove with the FBI employees to the site of his operation and, as the undercover agents moved to their assigned positions as lookouts, he powered up the drone with what he believed was the explosive device attached to it, charging documents said. Philippi was then taken into custody.

The charging documents included one image that shows Philippi conducting a test of the drone, as well as another photo of him with the FBI undercover agents showing off what he believed were explosive devices.

Philippi faces a maximum penalty of life in prison in connection with his guilty plea. Sentencing is currently set for Jan. 8, 2026.

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(NEW YORK) — New York City police are searching for the suspect who killed a 77-year-old man and a 78-year-old woman by stabbing them and setting them on fire in their Queens home, likely while searching for property to steal, sources said.

Neighbors reported a man knocking on doors on Monday, asking to charge a cell phone, with at least one neighbor turning the man away before he approached the victim’s house, the sources told ABC News.

Detectives believe they have identified the suspect, who has an extensive criminal record and was released from prison in 2023, sources said.

Surveillance video showed the suspect knocking on the victims’ back door and the 77-year-old victim opening it and letting him in around 10:15 a.m., according to sources.

Detectives believe the suspect spent five hours in the victims’ house, according to sources, likely searching for property to steal before setting it ablaze.

Surveillance video also showed the suspect leaving the home at 3:08 p.m., shortly before the house went up in flames, sources said.

Neighbors called the victim’s son, a New York City Fire Department paramedic who was off duty at the time of the fire, who rushed home to discover his parents dead, sources said.

The fire department responded to the location and put the fire out, the New York Police Department said in a statement. EMS pronounced both victims deceased at the scene.

The woman was found lying on the first floor and accelerant appeared to have been poured on her body, starting the fire, sources said.

The man was found in the basement where he was tied with bungee cords to a column supporting the house, sources said. He was also set on fire but that fire appeared to have extinguished itself, sources said.

The suspect is described as a male, with a dark complexion, approximately 30 to 40 years of age, medium build, and was last seen wearing a black hat, a black jacket, blue jeans, and black sneakers, according to the NYPD.

Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, or on X @NYPDTips.

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(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — More than four years after the deadly collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex in Surfside, Florida, federal investigators are expected to announce their preliminary findings on Tuesday regarding the cause of the tragedy.

“It is more likely that the collapse initiated in the pool deck than the tower,” a slide deck prepared ahead of today’s National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee meeting states.

Champlain Towers South was an oceanfront complex just north of the Miami Beach city line. The collapse of the structure killed 98 people in the middle of the night in June 2021.

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology have preliminarily concluded that the pool deck started to collapse more than seven minutes before the building fell to the ground, confirming what was suggested in earlier media reports.

The exact cause of the collapse has been under investigation in the years since the incident, but investigators have long focused part of their attention on the pool deck.

“At the time of the failure, the pool deck’s slab-column connections had critically low margins of safety,” the presentation notes. “The bulk of the critically low margins of safety was caused by design understrength and misplaced slab reinforcement.”

Officials noted in their presentation that issues with the pool deck existed from the time Champlain Towers South was built more than four decades ago.

“The structure had low resistance to progressive collapse, allowing the collapse of the pool deck to spread into and throughout the middle and east parts of the tower,” the slides added.

The federal probe into the collapse has been delayed several times. The final investigative report was previously expected to be completed in 2025, but that goal has since been pushed back another year.

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(NEW YORK) — The Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack on the World Trade Center is still killing New York City firefighters 24 years later.

On Tuesday, the New York City Fire Department will remember 39 members who died in the past year of illnesses related to their work during the rescue and recovery efforts at what was then known as The Pile.

Their names will be added to the FDNY World Trade Center Memorial Wall during a Tuesday afternoon ceremony at the department’s Brooklyn headquarters. The inscription on the wall says, “Dedicated to the memory of those who bravely served this department protecting life and property in the City of New York in the rescue and recovery effort at Manhattan Box 5-5-8087 World Trade Center.”

The FDNY has lost more than 400 members to World Trade Center illnesses, surpassing the 343 firefighters killed on 9/11 itself.

Overall, 2,753 people were killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Thursday will mark 24 years since the terror attacks. The annual commemoration ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan will begin at 8:40 a.m. Thursday.

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(FORT PIERCE, Fla.) — One hundred and twenty potential jurors are in federal court in Fort Pierce, Florida, Tuesday for the second day of jury selection in the criminal trial of Ryan Routh, the man accused of trying to kill Donald Trump on his golf course last year.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — who oversaw and dismissed one of Trump’s criminal cases — hopes to have a jury finalized by Wednesday afternoon, with the trial expected to take approximately three weeks.

The jury selection process so far has gone slowly, with Routh — who is representing himself despite not being a lawyer and having limited legal experience — requesting to ask potential jurors questions that Cannon deemed “politically charged” and irrelevant.

Among the questions Judge Cannon has barred Routh from asking are those involving jurors’ stance on Palestine, their opinion of Trump’s proposed acquisition of Greenland, and what they would do if they were driving and they saw a turtle in the middle of the road — which Routh said could speak to jurors’ character and mindset.

After a full day of jury selection on Monday, prosecutors successfully challenged twenty potential jurors due to concerns that they could not judge the case fairly, with Routh agreeing to all but one of the removals. Routh signaled he plans to challenge seven of the jurors.

Prosecutors allege that after planning his attack for months, Routh hid in the bushes of Trump’s Palm Beach golf course with a rifle in the predawn hours of Sept. 15.

With Trump just one hole away from Routh’s position, a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle poking out of the tree line and fired at him, causing him to flee, according to prosecutors. Routh was subsequently arrested after being stopped on a nearby interstate.

Routh has pleaded not guilty to five criminal charges that risk sending him to prison for life, including attempting to kill a presidential candidate and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.

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(NEW YORK) — The Drug Enforcement Administration said that it arrested over 600 people during a weeklong operation targeting the Sinaloa drug cartel.

The arrests were “aimed at dismantling the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world’s most violent and powerful drug cartels, responsible for flooding the United States with fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin,” according to the DEA.

In February, the Trump administration designated the Mexico-based Sinaloa cartel, along with seven other groups, as a foreign terrorist organization. The cartel remains one of the most significant threats to public safety, public health and national security in the U.S., according to the DEA’s statement on the arrests.

From Aug. 25 through Aug. 29, DEA agents across 23 domestic field divisions and seven foreign regions carried out coordinated enforcement actions that resulted in the arrests of 617 people, along with the seizure of 480 kilograms of fentanyl powder, 714,707 counterfeit pills, 2,209 kilograms of methamphetamine, 7,469 kilograms of cocaine, 420 firearms and currency and assets worth close to $13 million, the DEA said.

“These results demonstrate the full weight of DEA’s commitment to protecting the American people,” said DEA Administrator Terrance Cole. “Every kilogram of poison seized, every dollar stripped from the cartels, and every arrest we make represents lives saved and communities defended. DEA will not relent until the Sinaloa Cartel is dismantled from top to bottom.”

“There are tens of thousands of Sinaloa members, associates, and facilitators operating worldwide, in at least 40 countries who are responsible for the production, manufacturing, distribution, and operations related to trafficking dangerous and deadly synthetic drugs,” the DEA continued.

Brian M. Clark, special agent in charge of the Los Angeles Field Division, said that while the numbers reflect a one-week snapshot, the efforts to combat the cartel persist year-round.

“The Sinaloa Cartel’s reach is vast and unremitting. This ruthless cartel is intent on cashing in, permeating our communities with their poison, with no regard to human suffering. For that reason, DEA’s work remains critical and laser-focused. The success achieved during this operation is a direct result of the unwavering and exceptional work by the men and women of DEA,” said Clark.

ABC News’ Luke Barr contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is suing migrants with removal orders and issuing fines of up to $1.8 million to pressure them into self-deporting, immigration attorneys tell ABC News.

In recent months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has revived a rarely enforced 1996 law, using it to issue fines to migrants with deportation orders as part of the administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown.

The notices order them to voluntarily leave the U.S. to avoid the monetary penalty.

Merle Kahn, an attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said the fines were never used until 2017, during the first Trump administration. She told ABC News that during Trump’s first term the fines were rarely used, and when Joe Biden took office as president, he rescinded all of them.

“Now, they have started issuing the fines again, and they’ve increased them,” Kahn said. “They could be fined over $1.8 million if they have an outstanding deportation order and didn’t leave.”

In June, the Trump administration announced new regulations to streamline the process of issuing fines to immigrants who are in the country without authorization, including new fines, reduced time for appeal, and the elimination of a 30-day notice period.

That same month, ICE said it had issued more than 10,000 fines.

The fines include between $100 and $500 for each unlawful entry or attempted entry, and up to $998 per day, assessed for up to five years, for failing to comply with a removal order.

Immigration attorneys call the fines a “scare tactic” to force people to self-deport.

“There’s zero consideration of the circumstances surrounding why the person didn’t leave,” Kahn said. “It doesn’t matter if they never got notice, and the process for challenging these fines is really truncated.”

ICE and DHS officials did not respond to request for comment from ABC News. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement in June that the fines apply to individuals who enter the U.S. illegally, ignore or delay removal orders, or “do not honor agreements to comply with judges’ voluntary departure orders.”

“Financial penalties like these are just one more reason why illegal aliens should use CBP Home to self-deport now before it’s too late,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in the statement.

John Gihon, a Florida immigration attorney, told ABC News the notices have changed in recent months.  

Before July, Gihon said people would receive a notice of intent that they could respond to and appeal. Now, he said, individuals “are just getting invoices.”

“You can appeal this if you think it’s incorrect, but it’s going to be decided by basically the same exact office and agency who issued the fine in the first place, and there’s no appeal after that,” Gihon said. “It’s gotten amazingly draconian.”

Gihon told ABC News that one of his clients recently received a $1.8 million fine due within 30 days. He said his client can’t voluntarily leave the country because he doesn’t have a passport or other travel documents.

“He’s been physically unable to leave the United States unless he illegally entered another country,” Gihon said. He said his client also has a business and family in the U.S.

“He’s unable to comply, and does not want to have to pay all these fines and lose his only livelihood for him and his family,” Gihon said.

Edward Cuccia, a New York immigration attorney, said he has clients who work minimum wage jobs who have received million-dollar fines. He said the government is spending “more on postage to send the notices” than it will ever collect.

In an escalation, the Trump administration is now suing some of the immigrants who received these fines.

“If you fail to pay the full amount on or before the deadline listed below, the Department of Justice may initiate legal proceedings against you at any time,” said a notice included in a recent lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice. “However, you can avoid payment if you voluntarily depart the United States immediately.”

According to several lawsuits reviewed by ABC News, the DOJ is asking courts to issue judgments against individuals for the fines, and to award “other relief as may be appropriate.”

“It’s a scare tactic to encourage people to self-deport,” Kahn said. “I think anyone with an outstanding deportation order can expect to receive a fine if the order was issued within the past five years.”

 

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(NEW YORK) — New York City police officers opened fire early Sunday and killed a man alleged to have barged though the back door of a police precinct station house and attacked an officer with a butcher knife when she tried to fight him off, authorities said.

The deadly shooting occurred on a street in the Brownsville section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn near the 73rd Precinct station house, where the suspect slashed an officer with a knife that authorities said had a 14-inch blade, according to police.

On Monday, the New York Police Department (NYPD) identified the deceased suspect as 35-year-old Justin Coleman of Brooklyn.

“Every day our officers put on their uniforms, they encounter dangerous situations out in the street, but it’s another kind of danger when someone comes directly into a precinct armed with a knife and attacks our officers,” Chief of Patrol Phillip Rivera of the New York York Police Department (NYPD) said at a news conference on Sunday.

A motive for the station house attack remains under investigation.

The attack occurred at around 5:24 a.m. when the suspect was captured on surveillance video attempting to enter the locked front door of the station house, Rivera said on Sunday. The suspect then allegedly walked to the rear of the station house and entered through a door that Rivera said is clearly marked for use by authorized NYPD personnel only.

“He entered the rear of the precinct and was immediately confronted by a police officer who was assigned to station-house security,” Rivera said.

When the officer directed the suspect to the front of the station house for assistance, he allegedly pulled out the butcher knife and attacked her but the officer was able to fight him off, Rivera said. The suspect slashed the officer in the forehead before fleeing, the NYPD said in a statement on Monday.

Rivera said the suspect ran out of the back door allegedly still wielding the knife. Several officers followed the suspect down the street, ordering him repeatedly to drop the weapon, according to Rivera.

Officers initially deployed a stun gun on the suspect but it had no effect, Rivera said during Sunday’s news conference.

At one point, the suspect “lunged at an officer with the knife extended toward that officer,” prompting officers to open fire, hitting the suspect multiple times, Rivera said Sunday.

On Monday, the NYPD said that two officers shot the man.

The suspect was taken to Brookdale Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn where he was pronounced dead, according to Rivera on Sunday.

The officer who was attacked at the station house was taken to a hospital, treated for what Rivera described as superficial injuries, and released.

“Thank god our sister is on the road to recovery, but this was a clear targeted attack on New York City police officers,” Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association union, said in a statement. “This individual had no fear when he walked into a police precinct and attacked a uniformed cop – there is no telling what he might have done to innocent New Yorkers out on the street. Despite being injured, our sister pursued this individual along with her fellow police officers, and they stopped the threat before anyone else was hurt.”

“This is another example of the extraordinary work our police officers are doing in an incredibly dangerous environment,” Hendry’s statement said.

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(AUBURN, Ala.) — A man is in custody for allegedly killing a retired Auburn University professor, whose body was discovered in an Alabama dog park, authorities said.

Dr. Julie Gard Schnuelle, a veterinarian and longtime employee of Auburn University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, was found dead in a wooded area of Kiesel Park on Saturday, Auburn police said.

The 59-year-old died from an assault, police said.

Harold Rashad Dabney III, of Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested on Sunday and charged with two counts of capital murder, police said.

Dabney, 28, also allegedly stole the former professor’s car, which has been recovered, police said.

Dabney is being held without bond, police said. The Lee County District Attorney declined to discuss details of the case with ABC News.

Auburn University called Schnuelle a “beloved” faculty member at the Department of Clinical Sciences in the Large Animal/Food Animal section, where she worked from 2003 to 2021.

“She was a cherished educator, mentor and colleague whose dedication to students and passion for theriogenology and veterinary medicine left a lasting impact on Auburn,” an Auburn spokesperson told ABC News. “Dr. Gard Schnuelle’s legacy of compassion, scholarship and service will continue to inspire generations of veterinarians.”

Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama senator and former Auburn football coach, wrote on social media, “Suzanne and I are devastated by the news of this tragic loss in our community. We are praying for the victim’s family and loved ones and for justice to be served.”

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