Dozens of countries and economies scored higher than the United States on the world's leading measure of student achievement, according to "PISA 2025 Results," a report released Tuesday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. American 15-year-olds posted a reading score of 490 and a math score of 463 on the 2025 exam, known as PISA. Twenty-four countries and economies scored higher than the U.S. in math.
Ten of those also beat the U.S. in reading, according to a Newsweek analysis of the results. PISA is administered every three years to 15-year-olds around the world. More than 760,000 students, representing some 33 million 15-year-olds in 91 countries and economies, took the exam last year.
About 4,600 of them were in the United States. Singapore posted the highest reading score, at 535, followed by China at 527. In math, China led with 612, more than 100 points above the U.S. mark, followed by Singapore at 563.
China's result reflects only four regions, Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Taiwan, tested separately under the name "Chinese Taipei," also outscored the U.S. in both subjects. Japan, Korea and Estonia rounded out the group that beat the U.S. in both reading and math.
Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand outscored the U.S. in reading but not math. A longer list, including Switzerland, Canada, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Italy, Sweden and Germany, beat the U.S. in math but not reading. Germany and Sweden each edged the U.S. math score by a single point.
Most participating Chinese jurisdictions, along with Estonia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Chinese Taipei and the United Kingdom, were the only education systems to rank in the top 10 worldwide in science, math and reading alike, the OECD found. U.S. students still scored above the average of the 38 OECD countries in reading and science, and near the middle of the pack in math. They also scored above average on a new measure of computational problem solving, a category topped by China, Singapore and Japan.
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