Only 37 percent of US high school seniors are able to pass minimum requirements for college math and reading, according to the US Department of Education’s latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

The report also showed massive racial gaps in ability, and reflect the fact that nonwhites now form the majority of students in public schools.

The report, also known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” showed that only 37 percent of American 12th-graders were “academically prepared for college math and reading in 2015,” and shows a steady increase in numbers over the last few years.

According to the report, the biggest problems came at the bottom, with growth in the share of students deemed “below basic” in their abilities.

In math, 38 percent of students were in that group in 2015, compared with 35 percent two years earlier. In reading, 28 percent of students were “below basic,” compared with 25 percent.

In reading, the average score of 287 out of 500 points was about flat from two years earlier, but down significantly from 292 in 1992, when the test was first given.

In reading, 49 percent of Asian students performed at or above proficiency last year. So did 46 percent of white students, 25 percent of Hispanic students and 17 percent of black students.

In reading, “The students at the top of the distribution are going up and the students at the bottom of the distribution are going down,” said Peggy Carr, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

“There is a widening of the gap between higher and lower-ability students,” she said.

In math, the average score of 152 out of 300 points was one point lower than in 2013. A significant drop in math scores was seen among students whose parents didn’t finish high school.

“In math, the decline is real,” Ms. Carr said. “Students at the lower end are getting worse.”

In math, 47 percent of Asian students performed at or above proficiency. So did 32 percent of white students, 12 percent of Hispanic students, and 7 percent of black students.

Carr added that “demographic shifts may play a role” in the figures.

According to earlier official figures, whites are already the minority of all state school students, five years ahead of earlier predictions.

In the mid-1990s, white pupils represented almost 65 percent of pupils in the US state school system. The projections show that by the mid-2020s that figure will be about 45 percent.

A US Census Bureau report, released in March last year, revealed that nonwhites will make up an absolute majority of those under the age of 18 in the US by 2020—less than four years away.

By around 2020, “more than half of the nation’s children are expected to be part of a minority race or ethnic group,” the Census Bureau said, putting Americans under the age of 18 at the front of a trend that will see the overall population follow suit some 20 years later.

The nonwhite population is projected to rise to 56 percent of the total in 2060, compared with 38 percent in 2014.

Given the vast—and unbridgeable—racial differences in IQ, these figures mean that US academic standards will inevitably continue to decline to those of Mexico or other Latin American nations.

In addition, the population projections highlight the point that legal Third World immigration is as large a threat as illegal immigration to America’s future as a First World nation.