Math scores of American 15-year-old students in last year’s international test dropped sharply compared to those recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic, but reading and science scores didn’t change much, according to data released Tuesday.
Of all school systems that participated in PISA last year, the United States ranked 6th in reading, 10th in science, and 26th in math.
Compared to the results from 2018, the last time the high-profile assessment was given, the average math scores declined by 13 points last year for 15-year-olds in the United States. In fact, the 2022 scores took an 18-point dip from 2003, when the earliest PISA data was available for math.
While students of some developed nations still outperformed their American peers in math, they performed worse enough that their scores were not significantly different from those of the United States.
For example, France, Germany, Norway, and Portugal all scored higher than the United States in math in 2018. But their 2022 scores are at the same level statistically.
“These results are another piece of evidence showing the crisis in mathematics achievement,” said Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, an agency within the U.S. Department of Education that administers the PISA in the United States. “Only now can we see that it is a global concern.”
The picture is more encouraging when it comes to reading and science. For American teenagers, their 2022 scores in the two subjects remained steady compared to those from 2018 and 2000, which is when PISA was first administered.
In reading, American students scored 504 on a zero-to-1,000 scale, well above the global average (476) and only after Singapore (543), Ireland (516) and Japan (516), South Korea (515), Estonia (511), and Canada (507). The 2022 results also found that American students scored just one point below their 2018 reading scores.
American students also scored statistically flat in science (499) compared to 2018, falling by just three points.
Overall, the United States managed to climb its PISA rankings in all three subjects despite the fact that American students’ scores either dropped or didn’t see much change.
Ms. Carr said this is because scores declined even steeper in other countries that typically perform better.
“You can consider that as good news, perhaps, that we have rankings that are higher than they were before,” she said. “But those rankings are due to others suffering more because of this pandemic than the United States. So I think it’s relative.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona attributed the improved international rankings to the $350 billion federal relief money for schools, claiming that the investment during the COVID pandemic helped prevent worse academic losses.
“While we saw even more dramatic declines in the math scores in other countries, our math scores are still declining, and they remain stubbornly low,” Mr. Cardona said. “We have what it takes to be number one in PISA, so today, we need to fight complacency with the same urgency with which we fought COVID.”
“Let’s remember: this is the United States of America. We have the potential to lead the world in education and the strength to make sure every student benefits from a quality education in this country,” he said in a statement on Tuesday. “And we shouldn’t aim for anything less. In the United States, we have what it takes to be No. 1 in PISA.”
In recent PISA tests, China ranked first in all three subjects, usually outperforming second-placers by astonishing double-digit margins. However, it has long been heavily criticized for submitting results that do not reflect the country’s actual educational progress.
In PISA, China is represented by 15-year-old students from what’s known as “BSJZ,” an acronym for Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang—the country’s top four provincial-level administrative units in terms of wealth and urbanization. The BSJZ covers only 13 percent of China’s total population, a significant portion of which lives in low-income, undeveloped rural areas with limited educational resources.
The United States would get stellar results if PISA allowed the country to be represented by only the consistent best-performing states such as Massachusetts and New Jersey, argued Derek Allison, an education policy expert and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
