American 15-year-olds just posted their worst international reading scores in a quarter century, though it was also one of their best relative rankings in decades.
Untangling how this happened is the real lesson of the most recent international test results for district leaders who have to explain them to school boards, parents, and teachers.
The Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, is administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. It tests what 15-year-olds can do in reading, math, and science and includes 760,000 students in 91 countries. Its 2025 results report that U.S. reading scores fell 14 points since 2022, near a 25-year low. Math and science held roughly flat.
Because most other countries fell by similar or larger margins, the United States actually rose in the international rankings. That makes it a good-news story built on a bad-news backdrop.
