The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment results on September 8, 2026, revealing that average student performance across 91 participating countries and economies fell to the lowest levels in PISA’s 25-year history. Reading scores dropped 14 points on average since the 2022 cycle, while math performance has declined sharply since 2018. U.S. students performed above the OECD average in reading, science, and a new computational problem-solving domain, but American reading scores fell 14 points and math declined 2 points, leaving math performance 24 points below 2009 levels. The acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, Matthew Soldner, noted that the United States recorded the widest performance gap between its highest-scoring and lowest-scoring students of any participating country.
Key Takeaways
- Average student performance across 91 countries fell to the lowest levels ever recorded in PISA’s history; reading scores declined 14 points on average since 2022, with math declining sharply since 2018.
- U.S. students performed above the OECD average in reading, science, and computational problem solving, but reading scores dropped 14 points and math fell 2 points (still 24 points below 2009 levels).
- The U.S. recorded the widest gap between 90th-percentile and 10th-percentile students of any participating country, according to NCES acting commissioner Matthew Soldner.
- The U.S. gained 3 points in science compared to 2022, returning to 2009 levels; science was the primary assessment focus of the 2025 cycle.
- The OECD cautioned that the U.S. did not meet PISA’s minimum participation requirements for students or schools in this cycle, limiting the precision of direct comparisons.
- The 2026 PDK poll, released the same week, showed declining public confidence in the U.S. education system.
Global Scores Hit Record Lows as the Pandemic’s Academic Effects Persist
The 2025 PISA results confirm what many education researchers have warned about since schools reopened after COVID-19 shutdowns: the pandemic’s disruption to learning was not a temporary dip but the beginning of a sustained decline that has continued well beyond the return to in-person instruction. Across 91 countries, the average reading score dropped 14 points since 2022, an acceleration of a trend that had already been moving downward in previous cycles. Math scores have declined sharply since 2018, and the 2025 results show no reversal of that trajectory.
The National Center on Education and the Economy, in a statement released alongside the data, described the results as particularly consequential because they arrive during a period of rapid technological change. AI adoption, automation, and digital transformation are restructuring labor markets at a pace that demands the very skills PISA measures: the ability to read critically, reason mathematically, and solve complex problems. A generation of students scoring at record lows on those measures is entering a workforce that is raising the bar for entry-level competency, not lowering it.
The scale of the decline is not limited to a single region or income level. Performance fell across high-income and low-income countries alike, across East Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the developing world. The OECD’s framing was blunt: the knowledge and skills PISA measures are foundational to young people’s ability to learn, pursue opportunity, and shape their futures, and the 2025 results show those foundations weakening on a global scale.
U.S. Performance Shows a Divided Picture: Above-Average Scores With the Widest Internal Gap
The United States occupies an unusual position in the 2025 results. American students scored above the OECD average in reading, science, and the new computational problem-solving domain, a distinction that places the U.S. in the upper tier of participating countries on aggregate measures. But that aggregate masks what acting NCES commissioner Matthew Soldner identified as the defining feature of U.S. performance: the gap between the highest-performing and lowest-performing American students is wider than in any other participating country.
Students at the 90th percentile — the top 10% of U.S. test-takers — performed at levels competitive with the highest-scoring students anywhere in the world. Students at the 10th percentile scored far below their counterparts in peer countries. That spread means the U.S. does not have a single education system producing uniform results. It has, in practical terms, two systems operating within the same borders: one that produces globally competitive students and one that leaves the lowest-performing students further behind than their peers in countries with fewer resources.
The Center for Education Reform, in its analysis of the 2025 results, framed the picture in historical terms. Compared to 2022, U.S. scores increased 3 points in science (returning to 2009 levels), dropped 14 points in reading, and declined 2 points in math (still 24 points below 2009). The reading decline matches the global average, suggesting that whatever forces are driving the worldwide drop — whether pandemic-related learning loss, screen time effects, or changes in how young people engage with text — are affecting American students at the same rate as their international peers.
Science Was the Primary Focus, and the U.S. Showed Modest Gains
Each PISA cycle designates one of its three core domains as the primary focus, devoting a larger share of assessment items and contextual questions to that subject. For 2025, science was the primary domain. The U.S. gained 3 points in science compared to 2022, a modest improvement that returned American performance to the level recorded in 2009. Reading and math were assessed as minor domains, meaning fewer new items were developed and the assessment relied more heavily on trend questions carried over from earlier cycles to enable comparisons over time.
The minor-domain designation for reading and math is important context for interpreting the U.S. declines. Fewer test items mean wider confidence intervals and less granular data on specific skill areas within each domain. The OECD cautioned that the U.S. did not meet PISA’s minimum participation requirements for students or schools in this cycle, a sampling limitation that further reduces the precision of comparisons with both prior U.S. results and other countries’ current scores.
Despite those caveats, the direction of the reading and math trends is consistent with domestic assessment data. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, the U.S. government’s own standardized testing program, has documented similar patterns of declining literacy and numeracy among American students since the pandemic, lending credibility to the PISA findings even where the sample falls short of ideal standards.
A New Domain Measures Computational Problem Solving for the First Time
The 2025 cycle introduced a new innovative domain called Learning in the Digital World, which included computational problem-solving tasks using block-based programming tools and concept-map builders. The U.S. participated in this domain for the first time, and American students performed above the OECD average, a result that suggests some degree of comfort with computational thinking even as traditional literacy and numeracy skills decline.
The introduction of computational problem solving as a PISA domain reflects the OECD’s recognition that the skills required for economic participation are shifting. Coding, algorithmic thinking, and the ability to structure information digitally are no longer niche technical skills but are increasingly embedded in routine work across industries. The challenge for education systems is that computational thinking does not replace reading and mathematical reasoning; it builds on them. A student who can manipulate a concept map but cannot read a complex text critically is not prepared for the workforce the OECD is describing.
The relationship between technology and student performance is itself a subject of growing scrutiny. Across the United States, school districts are grappling with how to manage students’ interactions with AI tools, social media, and digital devices in ways that support learning rather than undermining it. AI companions and chatbots have become a growing presence in teenagers’ daily lives, raising questions about how constant access to conversational AI affects the development of independent critical thinking, sustained reading habits, and the cognitive stamina that PISA’s assessments are designed to measure.
Declining Public Confidence Compounds the Academic Data
The PISA release arrived during the same week as the 2026 PDK poll, an annual survey of public attitudes toward public education in the United States. The poll found declining confidence in the American education system, a sentiment that aligns with the PISA data but also reflects broader anxieties about school safety, curriculum debates, educator shortages, and the perceived inability of schools to prepare students for an economy undergoing rapid technological transformation.
The combination of international assessment data showing record-low performance and a domestic opinion poll showing declining public trust creates a challenging environment for education policymakers. Calls for reform are amplified when both the empirical evidence and public sentiment point in the same direction, but the specific reforms that would address PISA-measured declines — sustained investment in reading instruction, math curriculum redesign, teacher retention and compensation, and equitable resource distribution across school districts — require political will and fiscal commitment that have proven difficult to sustain over the multi-year timelines education improvement demands.
At least 37 states now have official AI guidance for schools, and both New York City and Los Angeles Unified School District implemented moratoriums on student-facing AI tools for the 2026-27 school year, reflecting the growing recognition that the intersection of technology and education requires deliberate policy intervention rather than passive adoption. Whether those interventions address the root causes of declining student performance or merely manage one symptom of a larger structural challenge is a question the next PISA cycle, scheduled for 2028, will begin to answer.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is PISA?
PISA is the Programme for International Student Assessment, a triennial evaluation administered by the OECD that tests 15-year-old students in reading, math, and science across participating countries and economies. The 2025 cycle assessed students in 91 countries and included a new computational problem-solving domain.
How Did the U.S. Perform on PISA 2025?
U.S. students scored above the OECD average in reading, science, and computational problem solving. However, reading scores dropped 14 points and math declined 2 points compared to 2022. The U.S. also recorded the widest gap between its highest-performing and lowest-performing students of any participating country.
Why Did Global Scores Drop to Record Lows?
The OECD attributed the declines to the ongoing effects of pandemic-related learning disruption, though the downward trends in math predate COVID-19, having declined sharply since 2018. The reading decline of 14 points since 2022 was the sharpest single-cycle drop recorded in PISA’s history.
Did the U.S. Meet PISA Participation Requirements?
The OECD cautioned that the U.S. did not meet PISA’s minimum participation requirements for students or schools in the 2025 cycle, which limits the precision of comparisons with other countries and with prior U.S. results.
What Is the New Computational Problem-Solving Domain?
The 2025 cycle introduced Learning in the Digital World, a domain that measures computational problem-solving skills through block-based programming tools and concept-map builders. The U.S. participated for the first time and scored above the OECD average.
