Posted on 09/09/2026 9:45:32 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Results from a recent global assessment indicate that reading scores for American high school students have dropped over the past three years, while math and science performance still falls behind their peers in several other developed countries.
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests 15-year-olds in math, science, and reading proficiency as metrics for college and career readiness, conducted its last tests in 2025.
The initial findings, released on Sept. 8, indicate that children from Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom continue to outperform American public-school children in those three subjects.
PISA has not yet shared comprehensive comparative rankings of the 91 nations that participated in the latest assessments.
China did not participate as a nation; the four Chinese provinces that did also outperformed American 15-year-olds.
About 760,000 children across the world participated, according to the PISA website.
All told, U.S. students still performed above the average of all participating nations in reading and science, and slightly below average for math.
Compared to the 2022 PISA, average U.S. results in science remained the same.
For math and reading, however, the average scores remained below pre-COVID levels and "among the lowest ever observed in PISA in the United States" dating back 26 years.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the nation's outdated public education needs a major overhaul that begins with universal school choice for all American families.
"The United States of America is a nation built to lead the world, yet our one-size-fits-all federal education bureaucracy has shortchanged our children and stifled our future," she said in an email to The Epoch Times.
"Today's international education scores confirm a decade of stagnation and a devastating gap: we successfully propel our highest achievers, but the lowest-performing students are falling further behind - and have suffered a loss of learning in reading equivalent to nearly a year and a half of instruction compared to 2015.
"This moment is a stress test for our nation's future. To pass it, we must enact a hard reset that stops protecting a failed status quo and instead builds a system that empowers state leaders and embraces innovative learning options through school choice."
The PISA proficiency levels range from one to six, with level two considered minimum proficiency.
Seventy-four percent of the U.S. students were at level two or above in reading, but only 13 percent were at level five or six.
The results for science were similar.
For math, 65 percent of U.S. students were at level two or above, but only 8 percent were at levels five or six, compared to 54 percent of the four Chinese provinces and Singapore's 37 percent.
The 2025 program introduced a digital computational problem-solving assessment.
U.S. children scored above the overall average in that category, still falling behind several Asian and English-speaking nations, but outperforming Germany, France, Mexico, and Brazil, according to the PISA report.
Globally, PISA determined that one in five students is considered low-performing in science, math, and reading, up from 16 percent in 2022.
Average reading scores fell by 28 points since 2015, while math fell by 22 points, according to the report.
"PISA 2025 shows that reversing declines in student performance is urgent," said Mathias Cormann, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which oversees the PISA program.
"The most successful education systems focus on fewer areas in greater depth, invest in teachers, engage parents, and provide targeted support for the students and schools that need it the most," Cormann said in the report.
"Technology and AI can strengthen learning and help prepare young people for the future, but only when used purposefully and not as a substitute for attention, effort, and understanding."
PISA also surveyed participants about their use of artificial intelligence to draft text in writing assignments and determined that those who did not use it outperformed those who said they did.
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
When researchers analyze U.S. PISA scores by race and ethnicity, the disaggregated scores often match or rival top international educational systems, while overall national averages sit closer to the middle of the OECD pack or higher depending on the subject.
Asian-American students consistently score the highest among domestic subgroups, frequently ranking on par with or above top-performing global jurisdictions like Singapore or Shanghai in math and
White (non-Hispanic) students score significantly above the OECD average and rank near top international countries.
Hispanic and Black students in the U.S. score lower on average than their white and Asian peers, though analyses note that American Hispanic students often score comparably to or higher than aggregate student results in many Spanish-speaking origin countries
Dude!
Like, math is HARD, dude!
Our iFag phones give us he answers..............
Let’s bring in 10 million more Somalis to raise our scores!
Others may be able to read and write better but I bet we’re better at putting a condom on a cucumber.
Sad…but true.
How many grade school kids could handle a McGuffey Reader these days? (for grade levels 1–6 and widely used as textbooks in American schools from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century.)? Maybe Randi Weingarten could speak to this issue.
End teachers unions, end all federal funding, end all cell phones in schools, any teacher teaching any liberal LGBTWRSTUVWXYZ shxt is fired in the spot, any teacher with blue pink or green hair fired on the spot, any teacher not dressed as their birth sex fire on the spot, any teacher teaching anything but the correct curriculum fire on the spot, any kid that refuses to respect authority have common courtesy they get ONE reprimand any follow on issue they’re expelled permanently....problem solved.
yep
easily fixed
but a dumbed down population is easier to control
“US Students Still Behind Much Of The World In Math And Reading: Global Assessment”
As a parent, this is ok with me. What matters TO ME is my ability to buy that boat and that F150, and as long as the schools are ‘free’, I can do that just that. So who cares whether my kids learn reading or math.
(plenty here think the above, including people I work with...but they know enough to keep it to themselves)
US Students Still Behind Much of The World in Math And Reading: Continuing Their Progress Toward The Ideal Democrat Socialist Voter
Kids aren’t students.
They are just the grist for Deep State’s diploma mills.
The USA is bi-modal, making the mean irrelevant.
Take out blacks and third worlders and we’re about No. 6.
Israel jumps up massively, too, if you remove the 20% Arab.
“ How many grade school kids could handle a McGuffey Reader these days? ”
Not even one, I’m afraid.
My grandsons, pretty bright and homeschooled in a non DEI household with a determined and intelligent mom, are way ahead of those chart lines.
Bingo. They're not students and the schools aren't schools.
We also had the SRA reading laboratory . Laminated cards had a brief story you would read and then answer questions on the back. They had the series color coded ,once you finished the orange series, on to the blue . There were about a dozen stories in each group. There were vocabulary words from each story . It was decent.
Education has become Indoctrination.
Control in the analysis for who the other countries are testing, i.e. University tract students only, and race in 12 key US counties and we look pretty darn good. Hard to get more money for that though.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.