Tenth-graders in the US saw their math scores on an international test hit an all-time low last year while plummeting 13 points compared to 2018, according to results released Tuesday.
The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, was randomly given to about 620,000 students in 81 countries in 2022.
The US students scored an average of 465 out of 1,000, down from 478 four years ago, when the test was last given, and below the international average of 472, the results show.
The American teens’ scores last year also were 18 points lower than in 2003, when the math test coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development was first widely given — making their 2022 results the lowest to date, according to the NCES.
The US kids were outscored by students in 33 other nations, although three countries that outpaced the Americans — Poland, Slovenia and Norway — saw even larger declines from their previous average scores.
“These results are another piece of evidence showing the crisis in mathematics achievement,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administered the tests in the US, in a press release.
“Only now can we see that it is a global concern,” Carr said. “The whole world is struggling in math.”
Meanwhile, the international PISA average scores in math, science and reading have plummeted by double digits since the turn of the century, statistics showed.
The top six performing countries last year were in Asia, led by Singapore, whose students notched an average of 575 on the math exam.
The rest of the top 10 was rounded out by European nations and Canada, which had the ninth highest test scores.
The exams are typically given every three years but were delayed by a year during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many students around the world were forced out of the classroom and relegated to remote learning.
Carr noted that even though American students endured longer classroom shutdowns, there did not appear to be a global correlation between PISA performance and in-class learning.
“Most of the change in scores was not due to how long schools were closed,” she said.
The OECD randomly selects groups of 15-year-olds around the globe to gauge their progress in math, science and reading, the latter of which were brighter spots for the US.
American students improved from eighth in the world to sixth in reading since 2018 and are now ranked 10th in science, up from 11th in 2018.
“When you look across the whole distribution of students, you see that we have high percentages of students who score in the highest proficiency levels internationally in reading and science but lag behind in mathematics,” Carr explained.
The sagging PISA math scores for the US teens mirrored a recent “significant decline” in the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, which saw math scores of fourth- and eighth-grade students drop in 45 states, she noted.
“These results put US achievement in an international context at a very important time in our history,” Carr said.
Despite the falling math scores of the US, the country actually moved up from 29th to 26th place in the global rankings, apparently because some nations that outperformed it were statistically tied.
US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona seized on that anomaly to put a positive political spin on the PISA scores in a Tuesday statement, even as he admitted there was “much work to be done.
“At an extremely tough time in education, the United States moved up in the world rankings in reading, math, and science – all three categories PISA measures – while, unfortunately, many other countries saw declines,” Cardona said.
“Today’s results are further proof that President Biden’s bold investments, backed by tireless efforts at the Department of Education to support student success and academic recovery, kept the United States in the game.”
The National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in the US, told The Post in a statement that “test scores do not measure everything a student knows or can do” but added that the results show that more investment is needed in American education.
“As seen in previous PISA results, ‘high performing’ nations and systems are those that combine high levels of achievement and high levels of support for student learning and well-being,” said NEA President Becky Pringle.
“These countries followed the same blueprint: they invested heavily in their students, educators, and schools regardless of socio-economic standing. It should not be surprising that spending more money on students and paying educators like the professionals they are leads to better student achievement.”