PISA 2025: U.S. Teens Hold Above-Average Reading and Science Scores as Global Results Hit Record Lows

The world's 15-year-olds just posted some of the lowest international test scores ever recorded, but American students are still holding above the developed-world average in reading and science. The fresh PISA 2025 results, released Sept. 8, show U.S. teenagers scoring 490 in reading and 463 in math, and the release is already reshaping the education debate in Washington as the Trump administration pushes school choice and state flexibility.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), tests 15-year-olds in dozens of countries and economies every three years. This cycle covered more than 760,000 students representing roughly 33 million teenagers across 91 countries and economies, including about 4,600 Americans.

U.S. Teens Keep Above-Average Standing in Reading and Science

American students beat the OECD average in reading and science and landed near the middle of the pack in math, while also scoring above average on a new measure of computational problem solving. Three out of four American 15-year-olds reached basic proficiency in reading, compared with 69 percent across the OECD, and U.S. math proficiency matched the developed-world average at 65 percent.

The headline numbers mask real losses at home. U.S. reading scores fell 14 points from the 2022 cycle, a drop equal to roughly six or seven months of learning, while science and math held statistically similar to three years ago. Since 2018, American math performance has slipped about 15 points, roughly half a year of schooling. U.S. reading now sits near a 25-year low, and math is among the lowest results since the test began in 2000.

Part of the apparent American resilience is comparative: the United States climbed the rankings largely because other countries fell faster. Even so, the United States still produced a large share of the world's highest-performing students, and American teens were less likely than peers elsewhere to rush through reading questions and answer them wrong.

Global Achievement Slide Reaches Record Lows

The bigger story is global. Students around the world earned among the lowest average scores ever recorded in reading, math, and science, extending a decline that began more than a decade before the pandemic. Average reading scores across the OECD fell 25 points between 2018 and 2025, more than a year of learning, and reading dropped in roughly three-quarters of education systems with comparable data.

Math results across the OECD fell from 485 to 463, a loss equal to about a year of instruction, while science slipped from 489 to 482. Twenty percent of 15-year-olds across the developed world now count as low performers in all three subjects, up from 16 percent in 2022, meaning they lack foundational skills for further education, work, and everyday life.

The top of the leaderboard stayed familiar. Singapore posted the highest reading score at 535, followed by China at 527, while China led math at 612, more than 100 points ahead of the United States, with Singapore second at 563. Japan, Korea, and Estonia beat the United States in both reading and math, and more than a dozen other economies outscored American teens in one subject or the other. OECD education director Andreas Schleicher said the pattern is plain: learning outcomes have stagnated or declined in many countries for well over a decade, with achievement gaps persisting across socioeconomic groups.

Phones, AI, and the Decline of Deep Reading

Researchers tied much of the reading collapse to how teenagers now consume information. The share of so-called hasty readers, students who rush through a text and answer incorrectly, nearly doubled since the last cycle, and the steepest losses came on tasks that require deep reading, remembering, integrating, and evaluating claims.

Digital habits showed up clearly in the data. More than one in four students said classmates are distracted by digital devices in most or every science lesson, and leisure use of phones during the school day tracked with sharply lower performance. Moderate use of technology for learning correlated with stronger science scores, and more than three hours of daily instructional screen time correlated with weaker results.

This was the first PISA cycle to measure artificial intelligence in the classroom, and the findings were nuanced. Students who used AI chatbots to help them learn scored higher on average than those who never did, while heavy reliance on AI to draft assignments went the other direction and correlated with lower scores. In short, how students use the tools matters more than whether they touch them at all.

Two low-tech factors still predicted success best: the quality of student-teacher relationships and family support. American students rated slightly above the OECD average on teacher relationship quality, but measures of family support have declined since 2022 both globally and in the United States.

School Choice and State Flexibility Take Center Stage

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, speaking at a webinar on the results, pointed to the Trump administration's priorities as the answer to America's widening achievement gap. She argued that one-size-fits-all federal mandates have boxed children in and that giving states flexibility and families more school choice options can help close the gap between high and low performers.

U.S. officials acknowledged the data demands humility. Acting National Center for Education Statistics commissioner Matthew Soldner said the response should be to follow the evidence of what works, for whom, and under what conditions. The results also carried a caveat: the American sample fell short of PISA's response-rate targets, and more than 40 percent of U.S. participants did not finish an accompanying questionnaire, leaving researchers unable to break out results by race and family income.

The American gap between top and bottom performers is now the largest in the developed world in reading, and the debate over how to close it is only beginning. Expect school choice battles in statehouses, new fights over classroom screen time and artificial intelligence, and continued pressure on the administration's education agenda between now and the next PISA cycle in three years.