U.S. Reading Scores Decline in 2025 PISA Results
U.S. PoliticsWell-covered
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The Facts
- PISA 2025 assessed the skills of 15-year-old students in 91 countries and economies.
- U.S. reading scores fell 14 points from 2022 in the 2025 PISA assessment.
- U.S. reading performance was near its lowest level in 25 years.
- U.S. students scored 502 points in science, two points higher than in 2022.
- U.S. science scores exceeded the OECD average of 484 points.
- OECD countries’ average reading score fell 28 points between 2015 and 2025.
- Students in Singapore and parts of China recorded the highest PISA scores.
Context
What is PISA?
PISA is the OECD’s international assessment of 15-year-old students’ performance in reading, mathematics and science. infobae infobae
How did U.S. performance differ by subject?
U.S. reading declined by 14 points from 2022; science rose two points to 502, above the OECD average. U.S. math was also near its lowest level since the assessment began in 2000. NYT infobae
Is the decline in reading limited to the United States?
No. OECD countries’ average reading score declined 28 points from 2015 to 2025, according to reporting on the assessment. infobae Hindustan Times
Where Left and Right agree, and where they split
- Where Left and Right agree
- Science scores held steady above the OECD average while reading fell 14 points to near a 25-year low, marking a subject-specific decline rather than a broad failure to learn or teach.
- Where Left and Right split
- Whether the reading decline calls for sustained investment in literacy instruction and educators, or for holding schools accountable to parents for a result science scores show wasn't inevitable.
- Why they won’t converge
- The divide is empirical, not just political: OECD data point to AI tools and social media use as key drivers of the reading decline, a causal claim neither the funding-focused left nor the institution-focused right can settle by citing today's scores alone.
How left and right read it
Teaching children to read is a public obligation, and these results measure how well we are funding it. Science held up — 502 points, two above 2022 and well clear of the OECD average of 484 — so this is not a story about students who cannot learn or teachers who cannot teach; it is about reading specifically, down 14 points and near a 25-year low. A decline building over a decade calls for investment in literacy instruction and the educators who deliver it.
“It is the latest warning sign for an American education system that has seen test scores fall over the last decade, starting before the pandemic.” — The New York Times
No school can fake literacy. Science held at 502, above the OECD average of 484, so the capability plainly exists — yet reading fell 14 points to near a 25-year low, while Singapore and parts of China set the top scores. Which side owes the other an explanation now: parents who want a different classroom, or the institutions that produced this result?
The receipts — all 100 sources
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