U.S. PISA Test Scores Continue to Move Up in the Rankings Among Other OECD Countries

Before I provide readers with the breathless headlines about the latest U.S. international student test scores in reading, math, and science, allow me to present three charts from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the outfit responsible for the PISA tests.  

Take a few moments, please, to examine how U.S. student scores compared to the average among all the other participating OECD countries.

 

 

Now anyone who follows education politics knows that both the New York Times and the Washington Post can be counted on present U.S. public schools in the worst possible light, all the while amplifying the doom-shrieking corporate education mavens from neocon and neolib sludgy think tanks such as Margaret Spellings and Rick Hess. 

And so the recent release of the latest results of PISA international test scores offers the latest fear-mongering opportunity for the editorial boards of the Times and Post to bury the news with scary headlines:

U.S. Reading Scores Plummet on Global Exam

 Five sentences into the Times story comes the required finger wagging by W's former Education Secretary and co-creator of the toxic No Child Left Behind debacle:  

“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.”

The Washington Post headline is even scarier: 

U.S. students' scores on international test reach lowest point in 2 decades.

Not-quite-as-gloomy headlines can be found elsewhere in the education media. For instance, Chalkbeat, a non-profit focused solely on education issues, leads with this headline, which can't bear to leave the reader with an impression that U.S. students might have done anything praiseworthy by raising their standing among other OECD countries' students: 

U.S. moves up in PISA test score rankings because other countries are doing worse.

Yes, indeed.  In fact, U.S. student ranking among the 91 other OECD countries has improved steadily since 2015 (full analysis here):

31st in 2015

25th in 2018

18th in 2022

16th in 2025

So how are these continuing U.S. improvements in world test score rankings reflected by U.S. media headlines?  Here's my favorite worst headline, which comes from Newsweek, whose media ranking over the past decade has moved steadily in the opposite direction of U.S. student PISA scores: 

Kids’ Test Scores Hit Record Lows . . .

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Let me offer a couple of observations about the context for the overall direction of PISA scores in recent years.  Since 2012 or thereabouts, test performance has moved downward at the same time that digital phone and computer screen time have increased and student alienation from others and the natural world have increased. Covid has not helped, nor has the continued demonization of students and teachers among media elites eager to sell copy and to amplify misleading and self-serving corporate messaging related to education. 

   

 

 

Day 1 for the New Congress

 

If Dems don't do this, they will have failed us entirely.

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— unpersoned.bsky.social (@unpersoned.bsky.social) September 5, 2026 at 5:51 PM

Mamdani Declares One Year Moratorium on AI in Elementary and Middle Schools

 from Mother Jones:

. . . . The decision, which comes a week before New York City public schools begin the year, “includes all software that uses student-facing generative AI.” Elementary and middle school students—about 600,000 students in total—will receive screen-time restrictions that loosen over advancing grades, ranging from zero to 45 minutes per day. Companion chatbots will also be prohibited for all grade levels. 

The city is also introducing biannual AI critical thinking training for high schoolers that cover determining what is and is not AI, impacts on careers and future skills, and AI-related biases, among others, along with limited pilot programs for a few classes per high school that incorporate AI tools into students’ learning “under the direct supervision of a trained educator.” 

“Children need their teachers and human connection in order to learn and in order to grow. And they need to develop skills alongside their peers, build relationships with their teachers, and wrestle with tough problems on their own,” Mayor Mamdani said in a Wednesday press conference. “The tech industry wants us to believe that AI in early education is not only inevitable, but that it is necessary. We do not see it that way.” . . . .

Why the Recent AI Collective Hack Was Worse Than You Thought

 From the Times article:

"The Hugging Face incident has spooked the A.I. industry. OpenAI and Anthropic both briefly paused training on their most powerful A.I. models in the wake of the attack, and Anthropic published a blog post this week calling for the industry to develop a “a lawful, verifiable, effective mechanism for coordinated pacing as soon as possible.”

A.I. safety experts were even more alarmed. They saw in the Hugging Face incident the first real-world example of an A.I. system’s successfully escaping human control, commandeering resources and scheming to cover its own tracks. Ajeya Cotra, one of the independent investigators of the Hugging Face incident, minced no words about the danger she saw, writing that it felt to her “like it’s more than 50 percent of the way to full-blown A.I. takeover.”

This is not insular A.I. safety jargon — by “full-blown A.I. takeover,” she means a scenario in which an A.I. system literally takes over the world, shutting humans out of critical systems and seizing political, economic and military power."

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/t...

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— James Horn (@schools-matter24.bsky.social) September 4, 2026 at 7:12 AM