What the Latest PISA Results Say About Education in the United States

Every few years, the PISA assessment offers one of the clearest international snapshots of how students are performing academically around the world.

PISA, or the Programme for International Student Assessment, is organized by the OECD and measures the skills of 15-year-old students in three main areas: mathematics, reading, and science. The latest complete results come from PISA 2022, which included 81 participating countries and education systems.

For the United States, the results tell a mixed story.

American students performed relatively well in reading and science compared with many other countries, but mathematics continues to be an important weakness. At the same time, the U.S. position improved in some international comparisons partly because many other countries experienced even larger declines after the COVID-19 pandemic.

So what do the results really say about education in the United States?

 

The United States Performs Better in Reading and Science

In PISA 2022, American students scored 504 points in reading, compared with the OECD average of 476.

In science, U.S. students scored 499, also above the OECD average of 485.

These results place the United States among the stronger-performing education systems in both categories.

In reading, only a small number of education systems performed significantly better than the United States. In science, the U.S. also remained competitive with many advanced economies.

This is important because discussions about American education often focus heavily on weaknesses. The PISA results show that the United States remains relatively strong in areas involving reading comprehension, interpretation, scientific reasoning, and understanding written information.

However, the picture changes when mathematics is considered.

Mathematics Remains the Biggest Challenge

American students scored 465 points in mathematics in PISA 2022, below the OECD average of 472.

The United States performed significantly below approximately 25 participating education systems in mathematics, including several Asian economies that continue to dominate international performance.

Singapore led the PISA 2022 mathematics results with a score of 575, followed by high-performing systems such as Macao, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea.

The gap between the United States and these leading systems is substantial.

The mathematics score is particularly important because mathematical skills are increasingly connected to careers in technology, engineering, finance, data science, artificial intelligence, and other rapidly growing areas of the economy.

For the United States, improving mathematics education is therefore not only an academic issue. It can also be viewed as a long-term workforce and economic competitiveness issue.

Did the United States Improve or Decline?

The answer depends on the subject.

Compared with PISA 2018, the U.S. mathematics score declined from 478 to 465.

Reading remained almost unchanged, moving from 505 to 504.

Science also remained relatively stable, declining slightly from 502 to 499.

The largest concern is therefore mathematics.

At the same time, the international context matters.

Between 2018 and 2022, average mathematics performance across OECD countries fell by about 15 points, while reading declined by around 10 points.

Many education systems experienced historically large decreases following pandemic-related school disruptions.

This means the relative position of the United States improved in some international comparisons even though American scores themselves did not meaningfully improve.

In other words, the U.S. did not suddenly become dramatically stronger. Instead, many other countries experienced sharper declines.

Some Countries Managed to Improve

Despite the difficult global environment, a small number of participating systems improved.

Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, and Chinese Taipei were among the few systems that improved across all three major PISA subjects between 2018 and 2022.

Other countries showed improvement in selected areas.

These examples are particularly interesting for education policymakers because they suggest that academic progress was possible even during a period of significant disruption.

Studying what these systems did differently may help provide useful lessons for countries looking to recover from learning losses.

The U.S. Results Reveal a Larger Question

The PISA results raise an important question for the United States:

Why does a country with significant financial resources, advanced universities, and a highly developed technology sector continue to struggle to reach the highest international levels in mathematics?

There is no single answer.

Educational outcomes can be influenced by curriculum quality, teacher preparation, family income, access to educational resources, school funding, student attendance, cultural attitudes toward education, and differences between individual school districts.

The United States also has one of the world’s most decentralized education systems. Schools in different states, counties, and communities can operate under very different circumstances.

That means national averages can hide substantial differences between student populations.

What the Results Mean for the Future

PISA should not be interpreted as a complete measurement of an education system.

A standardized international test cannot measure every important skill, including creativity, leadership, entrepreneurship, communication, or practical problem-solving.

However, the results remain valuable because they allow countries to compare academic skills using a consistent international measurement.

For the United States, the message from PISA 2022 is relatively clear.

American students remain competitive internationally in reading and science, but mathematics continues to represent a major challenge.

The country also avoided some of the extreme declines experienced by other education systems after the pandemic, but stability should not necessarily be confused with improvement.

If the United States wants to strengthen its position in an economy increasingly driven by technology, data, engineering, and artificial intelligence, mathematics education is likely to become even more important.

The real question is therefore not simply where America ranks today.

It is whether the U.S. education system can turn its relative strengths in reading and science into broader academic improvement while addressing its persistent mathematics gap.

That may be one of the most important education challenges facing the country in the years ahead.