American students are still trailing many developed countries in math performance following widespread school closure-caused learning loss, with scores on a recent international test sinking to their lowest point in the last two decades..
About 66 percent of American 15-year-olds achieved basic math proficiency, while about 80 percent did the same in reading and science on the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The exam, typically administered every three years but postponed because of Covid-19, tracks the academic competence of 15-year-olds around the world.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) oversees the PISA. The 2022 edition tested nearly 700,000 15-year-old students in 81 OECD member countries and partner economies on mathematics, reading and science.
Students of the same age in similar western nations such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany, as well as high-growth countries such as Singapore, South Korea, and Estonia bested U.S. students in math achievement in 2022. The U.S. ranked 28th out of 37 participating OECD countries in math.
The disappointing results are in keeping with a recent trend: PISA results from 2015 placed the U.S. 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 OECD members at the time, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.
U.S. underperformance in math was persistent in 2013 too, when 29 countries had higher test scores according to that year’s PISA. In science, students in 22 countries outperformed their American counterparts. In reading, 19 countries did better. Only 9 percent of 15-year-olds reached the top two levels of math excellence, compared with an average of 13 percent among developed nations.
Within the U.S., there is a general perception of mediocrity with regards to public education, especially in STEM. A 2015 Pew Research Center report found that only 29 percent of Americans rated K-12 education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics as above average or the best in the world.
The PISA picture from 2022 was not entirely bleak, as the U.S. scored above average internationally in reading and science. However, it still lost one point and three points, respectively, in those subjects compared to the 2018 test.
National test results from September 2022 showed math scores dropping for the first time in the history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is administered every two years. Math scores among nine-year-olds plunged 7 percentage points. That decline was most pronounced among minorities, with black students losing 13 points compared to five points among white students.
America’s math scores are lagging in spite of it investing far more in schooling than its European counterparts. In 2019, the United States spent $15,500 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That per-capita cost was 38 percent higher than the $11,300 average spent on each student in OECD member countries.
“I don’t think you can drop much lower,” Andreas Schleicher, the director for education and skills at OECD, told the New York Times of the latest PISA results.
A country note from the OECD said the 2022 math score was “among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics” for the U.S.
Even with the added advantage of wealth, relatively affluent U.S. students still scored lower than the average-performing student in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, the Times noted.
“It’s not just poor kids from poor neighborhoods,” Schleicher said.
Half of 15-year-olds in Hong Kong achieved a score that was as high or higher than the richest 10 percent of American kids, he said. Those rapidly growing Asian countries also have many more top-performers. Only seven percent of U.S. students reached the highest levels in math, while 23 percent in Japan and South Korea and 41 percent in Singapore were in the top bracket.
The U.S. has long struggled to compete with foreign countries on education outcomes. Data has established that school shutdowns and learning disruption over the pandemic greatly exacerbated that deficit. One in three U.S. students lack basic math proficiency, the assessment showed.
The 2022 PISA also showed a solidification of socioeconomic disparities in the U.S. Kids from low-income households are much less likely to score in the top quartile in math, the test showed.