PISA RESULTS: U.S. Slips in International Reading, Science, and Mathematics Rankings According to Latest Results from Programme for International Student Assessment

Released December 3, the results of the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) show that American fifteen-year-olds ranked seventeenth in reading, twentieth in science, and twenty-seventh in mathematics among the thirty-four countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD).¹ Those rankings are lower than in the previous PISA given in 2009 when the United States ranked fourteenth in reading, seventeenth in science, and twenty-fifth in mathematics.

Like traditional tests, PISA, which consists of multiple-choice and open-ended questions, tests students on what they have learned, but it goes one step further by also asking students to extrapolate what they have learned and apply that knowledge in unfamiliar settings, both in and outside of school. The thirty-four OECD member countries and thirty-one partner countries and economies that participated in PISA in 2012 represent more than 80 percent of the world economy.

“More and more countries are looking beyond their own borders for evidence of the most successful and efficient policies and practices,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “Indeed, in a global economy, success is no longer measured against national standards alone, but against the best-performing and most rapidly improving education systems. … By identifying the characteristics of high-performing education systems, PISA allows governments and educators to identify effective policies that they can then adapt to their local contexts.”

As shown in the table below, the United States, with a mean score of 481, ranks twenty-seventh out of thirty-four OECD countries in math performance—below the OECD average (494) and far behind top-performers Korea (554), Japan (536), and Switzerland (531), as well as Canada (518). Not included in the table are the thirty-one partner countries and economies that also took PISA, many of which performed better than the United States, including Shanghai-China (613), Singapore (573), and Hong Kong–China (561). When including these countries, the U.S. ranking slides down to thirty-six out of sixty-five.

PISA 2012: Mean Math Scores Among OECD Member Nations

In reading, the United States’s mean score (498), beat the OECD average (496), but fell far behind top-performers such as Shanghai-China (570), Hong Kong–China (545), Singapore (542), Japan (538), and Korea (536). Canada (523) was the highest-performing country in North America.

In science, the United States’s mean score (497) trailed the OECD average (501), as well as those of top performers Shanghai-China (580), Hong Kong–China (555), Singapore (551), Japan (547), and Finland (545). Again, Canada (525) was the highest-performing country in North America.

For the first time, three U.S. states—Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Florida—independently participated in PISA. In math, Massachusetts (514) and Connecticut (506) posted mean scores higher than the OECD average and that of the United States as whole while Florida (467) trailed both.

The complete PISA results are available at http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf.

Highlights for the United States are available at http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf.