Math scores have fallen worldwide, but the US still lags behind other countries

The math performance of American teens has fallen sharply since 2018, with scores lower than two decades ago and with American students continuing to trail global competitors, according to the results of a major international exam released Tuesday.

In the first comparable global results since the coronavirus pandemic, 15-year-olds in the United States scored lower than those of students in similar industrialized democracies such as the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany, and well behind those of students in top-performing countries such as Singapore. South Korea and Estonia – a continuation of underachievement in math that predates the pandemic.

The dismal math results were offset by stronger performance in reading and science, with the United States scoring above average internationally.

About 66 percent of U.S. students performed at least at a basic level in math, compared to about 80 percent in reading and science, according to the exam, the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA.

The exam was last administered in 2018 and measures the performance of 15-year-olds around the world, with an emphasis on real-world skills. Normally it is administered every three years, but during the pandemic it was postponed for a year. In 2022, nearly 700,000 teens around the world took the exam.

The results are the latest indicator of an American education system that is struggling to prepare all students from an early age proficiency in mathematics drop how much longer Students remain in the system. National test results last year also reported a bigger decline in math compared to reading, a subject that can be more affected by what happens at home and was less affected by school closures.

Students worldwide lost the equivalent of three-quarters of a year of math education, 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 during the pandemic.

Countries that kept schools closed for longer generally saw larger declines.

But the results were mixed. Even with the decline in math, the United States lost less ground than some European countries that prioritized opening schools more quickly. And the United States remained stable in reading and science.

The United States has even risen in the world rankings – largely due to the decline of other countries.

President Biden’s education secretary, Miguel A. Cardona, cautiously celebrated the United States’ improvement in the global rankings, which he attributed in part to a $122 billion federal aid package for schools that he said would “put the United States in kept the game’.

Yet the United States, the world’s largest economy, is far from a global leader in education, even though it spends more on education per student than many other countries.

In mathematics, the United States ranked 28th among the 37 participating countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which consist mainly of industrialized democracies that account for the majority of world trade.

“I don’t think you can drop much lower,” said Andreas Schleicher, director of education and skills at the OECD, which oversees the exam. “You don’t want to compare the U.S.” with less advanced economies, he said.

Even relatively affluent American students did not score as high in math as average-achieving students in top countries 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 as or better than the richest 10 percent of American students, he said.

Only 7 percent of American students scored at the highest level in math, compared with 23 percent in Japan and South Korea, and 41 percent in Singapore, the top-performing country.

“From a competitive perspective, this is not where you want to be,” said Tracey Burns, director of research and evaluation at the National Center on Education and the Economy, which studies high-performing school systems. She noted that there was also a gender gap in math, with 10 percent of American boys scoring at the highest level, compared to 5 percent of girls.

Perhaps just as concerning, one in three American students scored below a basic level of math proficiency, indicating that they struggle with skills they may need in the real world, such as using ratios to solve problems.

The surprising result was that the PISA test did not find a growing gap in math and reading between the best and worst performing U.S. students during the pandemic, unlike some other test results among younger students. (A larger gap in science was found.)

Few lower-income students reach the top, a worrying trend across countries.

In the United States, about one in ten students from disadvantaged backgrounds scored in the top quartile in math.

Many disadvantaged students don’t get access to rigorous math education from a young age, says Shalinee Sharma, the chief executive of Zearn, a widely used math platform for primary and secondary school students.

Unlike some countries that embrace math as a learned skill, the United States tends to treat math as a talent, labeling only certain students as “math kids,” she said. This philosophy can especially harm low-income students.

“When they have access to high-quality math education,” she said, “they excel.”

On other measures, the United States stood out for having more children living with food insecurity (13 percent, compared to an average of 8 percent in other OECD countries), more students being lonely at school (22 percent, versus 16 percent), and more students who do not feel safe at school (13 percent, versus 10 percent).