U.S. teens’ math performance has fallen sharply since 2018, with scores lower than 20 years ago, and with U.S. students continuing to trail global competitors, according to the results of a key international test released on Tuesday.
In the first comparable global results since the coronavirus pandemic, 15-year-olds in the United States scored lower than students in similarly industrialized democracies such as the UK, Australia and Germany, and far behind students in top-performing countries such as Singapore . South Korea and Estonia — continuing pre-pandemic math underperformance.
Dismal results in math were offset by stronger performance in reading and science, where the United States scored above the international average.
About 66 percent of U.S. students performed at least at a basic level in math, compared with about 80 percent in reading and science, according to the test, the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA.
The exam was last given in 2018 and measures the performance of 15-year-olds around the world, with an emphasis on real-world skills. Normally given every three years, it was delayed a year during the pandemic. Almost 700,000 teenagers worldwide took exams in 2022.
The results are the latest indicator of a US education system struggling to prepare all students from an early age, with math proficiency declining the longer students remain in the system. National test results last year also reported more declines in math than in reading, a subject that can be more affected by what happens at home and was less affected by school closures.
Globally, students lost the equivalent of three-quarters of a year of learning in maths, which was the main focus of the 2022 test. And only a few countries – Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and Australia – maintained high levels of math performance by during the pandemic.
Countries that kept schools closed for a longer period of time generally saw a larger decline.
But the results were mixed. Even with its decline in math, the United States lost less ground than some European countries that prioritized opening schools more quickly. And the United States held steady in reading and science.
The United States even rose in the world rankings – largely due to the decline of other nations.
President Biden’s Secretary of Education, Miguel A. Cardona, cautiously celebrated the United States’ improvement in world rankings, which he attributed in part to a $122 billion federal aid package for schools that he said “kept the United States in the game.” .
However, the United States, the world’s largest economy, is far from a world leader in education, even though it spends more on education per student than many other countries.
In math, the United States ranked 28th out of the 37 participating countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, made up mostly of industrialized democracies that account for the majority of world trade.
“I don’t think you can go much lower,” said Andreas Schleicher, director of education and skills at the OECD, which oversees the exams. “You don’t want to compare the US” to less advanced economies, he said.
Even relatively affluent US students did not score as high in math as the average performing student in top places like Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.
“It’s not just poor kids from poor neighborhoods,” Mr. Schleicher said. Half of Hong Kong’s 15-year-olds performed as well or better than the richest 10 percent of American students, he said.
Just 7 percent of U.S. students scored at the highest levels in math, compared with 23 percent in Japan and South Korea and 41 percent in Singapore, the top performer.
“From a competitive perspective, it’s not where you want to be,” said Tracey Burns, head of research and evaluation at the National Center for Education and the Economy, which studies high-performing school systems. She noted that there was also a gender divide in math: 10 percent of boys in the U.S. scored at the highest level, compared to 5 percent of girls.
Perhaps just as troubling: One in three U.S. students scored below a basic level of math proficiency, indicating they struggle with skills that may be needed in the real world, such as using ratios to solve problems.
In a surprising result, the PISA test found no widening gap in math and reading between the highest and lowest achievers in the US during the pandemic, unlike some other test results among younger students. (He found a widening gap in science.)
But few lower-income students make it to the top, a worrying trend across countries.
In the United States, about one in 10 students from disadvantaged backgrounds scored in the top quartile in math.
Many disadvantaged students lack access to rigorous math instruction starting at a young age, said Shalinee Sharma, CEO of Zearn, a widely used math platform for elementary and middle school students.
Unlike some countries that embrace math as a math skill, the United States tends to treat math as a talent — labeling only certain students as “math kids,” he said. This philosophy can particularly harm low-income students.
“When they get access to high-quality math learning,” he said, “they excel.”
On other measures, the United States stood out as having more children living with food insecurity (13 percent, compared to an average of 8 percent in other OECD countries), more students who are alone at school (22 percent, compared to 16 percent) and more students who do not feel safe at school (13 percent, versus 10 percent).
