The reading scores of American 15-year-olds have fallen sharply since 2022 and are near their lowest point in 25 years, according to the results of a key global exam released on Tuesday.
U.S. math scores are also among the lowest since the test began in 2000, even as students have held their ground in science.
By every measure, American students are being outperformed by students in Singapore and parts of China who had top scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, taken by 15-year-olds around the world.
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.
“Our kids are going in the wrong direction on the skills that are absolutely essential for their — and our — success. Period. The end,” said Margaret Spellings, a former education secretary under President George W. Bush. She called for “urgent action at all levels.”
But the results also show that the challenges facing the United States — including the allure of smartphones, social media and A.I., and the continued fallout from the pandemic — are not just American problems.
Reading scores are falling in many industrialized countries, down from their peak in 2012. Math scores are down globally since 2018.
Overall, the United States ranked above average in reading and science, and about middle of the pack for math, compared with 37 other countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a coalition of mostly free-market democracies that account for a majority of world trade.
Experts attribute the global declines, at least in part, to the rise of technology. Students are easily distracted and reading less for pleasure.
Across countries, the share of “hasty readers” — students who skimmed texts quickly and gave incorrect answers — almost doubled from 2018 to 2025, according to the PISA.
More than 760,000 teenagers from 91 countries and economies took the test last year, including about 4,600 in the United States.
Top-scoring countries included Singapore, Japan and Korea.
China also dominated the test, but the testing sample included only the provinces of Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, some of the country’s wealthiest coastal areas, prompting skepticism about cherry-picked results.
Still, those regions are highly populated, include some poorer areas, and are home to some of China’s top talent, said Tracey Burns, chief of global strategy and research for the National Center on Education and the Economy. Those students will soon be competing with American students for jobs and future innovations.
She estimated that the average student tested in China was more than five years ahead of American students in math, and three years ahead in science.
“Even a conservative read of these results is concerning,” Dr. Burns said.
The United States has long lagged the world’s best education systems, despite spending more on education than many countries.
Just 8 percent of American teenagers scored at the highest levels in math on the PISA, compared with 37 percent in Singapore, 23 percent in Korea and 22 percent in Japan. (In the Chinese sample, 54 percent of students scored at the top level in math.)
In reading, American students performed about as well as students in Australia and Canada. In science, American students competed with students in Switzerland and Finland.
But the share of American teenagers who failed to reach even a basic level of proficiency in reading and math, considered the minimum needed to read a utility bill, for example, has risen over the last decade.
That is in sharp contrast to the most successful Asian countries, which do a much better job of lifting up their most disadvantaged students, often by attracting top teachers and principals to their most challenged schools, said Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the PISA for the O.E.C.D.
“In the U.S. if you make a choice between a better teacher and a smaller class, you typically choose a smaller class,” he said. “In these countries, they save on the class size, but they get the best people to become teachers.”
Another difference: the use of A.I., which the western world has often used to “make things easier for kids,” Mr. Schleicher said.
In top Asian countries, he said, A.I. is not typically used by students, but is used by teachers “to make students think harder, work harder.”
Researchers urged some caution when interpreting the U.S. results. The U.S. sample included about 4,600 students from 144 schools, but response rates fell short of the PISA’s targets. The Trump administration last year slashed staffing at the federal agency responsible for administering the PISA in the United States, as part of its plan to shrink the Department of Education.
Still, experts say there is little doubt that American students have lost ground.
In the absence of a federal education agenda, it will be up to every state to push for improvements, said Kevin Huffman, a former education commissioner in Tennessee who now leads a nonprofit focused on education solutions.
“Nobody is off the hook,” he said.
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