US students post lowest reading and math scores in almost 20 years

American 15-year-olds recorded their weakest reading and math results in nearly two decades in the latest international assessment by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), while performance also declined across many developed economies.

For American students, science performance has remained stable throughout the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessments.

In reading and mathematics, however, the results released this month were below those recorded in 2018 and among the lowest ever observed for the U.S. in PISA.

PISA was the world's largest student assessment to date, evaluating 760,000 15-year-old students across 91 countries and economies in science, reading, mathematics and computational problem-solving.

American students scored 490 in reading in PISA 2025, the lowest since 2009, while their mathematics score of 463 was the lowest since 2006.

U.S. reading scores fell for the second consecutive assessment, dropping 14 points from 2022, the most recent assessment.

For PISA 2025, 4,625 American students from 144 schools completed the assessment, representing about 3.58 million 15-year-olds, or an estimated 85% of the country's 15-year-old population.

About 74% of American students reached basic proficiency in reading, meaning they can identify the main idea in a text of moderate length, find information based on explicit, though sometimes complex, criteria, and reflect on the purpose and form of texts when explicitly directed to do so.

The corresponding figure was 65% for mathematics, meaning these students can interpret and recognize, without direct instruction, how a simple situation can be represented mathematically, such as comparing the total distance across two alternative routes or converting prices into a different currency.

The U.S. was not alone in recording weaker results.

Across 23 OECD countries, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland, average performance in reading and mathematics fell to lowest levels since PISA began.

OECD countries recorded a 28-point drop in reading scores between 2015 and 2025, equivalent to about 1.5 years of learning while the average mathematics scores fell 22 points over the same period.

Despite the declines, American students scored above the OECD average in reading and science and roughly at the OECD average in mathematics. Experts said this was partly because performance in other countries had also declined.

Highschool students in a classroom in the U.S. Photo by Pexels

China, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Estonia and the U.K. were among the top-performing education systems. The four Chinese jurisdictions that participated in the assessment — Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang — ranked highest globally in both science and mathematics.

Singapore ranked second in math and science, and led the world in reading.

The latest assessment also examined students' use of artificial intelligence and their sense of belonging at school. Students who did not use AI for schoolwork scored about 20 points higher on average than those who did, a difference equivalent to roughly one school year, according to the OECD.

The assessment also found that more than half of young people were vulnerable to misinformation. Students are struggling to evaluate information and think critically about what they read, while cases of "hasty reading" — quickly reading a text and then incorrectly answering questions about it — have doubled since 2025, officials said.

Education experts have linked the reading decline in the U.S. to the growing use of shorter passages instead of full books in schools, partly due to standardized testing pressures, budget constraints and limited classroom time.

The latest PISA results come as confidence in U.S. public education continues to weaken. While most parents remain satisfied with their own children's education, slightly more than a third believe schools generally are not doing enough to prepare students for college.