A recent global assessment of 15-year-olds' math and reading skills shows that the United States lags far behind its peer nations in math while performing unexpectedly well in reading. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test compares students from over 100 countries. The results from the 2022 test, the first since the pandemic, show major declines in American students' math performance and a surprising stability in reading scores.
American students' math performance has long lagged behind other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of 38 industrialized countries primarily comprising nations in Europe and Asia. This trend continued in 2022, with the U.S. ranking 28th out of 37 OECD countries, scoring an average of 465 points on the test—7 points lower than the average score for OECD countries
