Reading scores among 15-year-olds in the United States have fallen to the lowest level in approximately 25 years, according to the latest international education assessment.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a global metric for educational achievement released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on Tuesday, revealed a significant decline in US performance.

Results from the 2025 PISA assessment showed that US reading scores dropped by 14 points compared to the 2022 assessment. While a broader international trend saw an average drop of 16 points across 23 participating countries, the US exhibited a particularly large performance gap.

This decline in reading proficiency has significant implications for the future academic and economic competitiveness of American students. Experts noted the stark contrast between high and low performers within the US, indicating systemic issues in educational equity.

According to Michael Kieffer, a professor of literacy education at New York University, the US has a "significantly wider inequality in reading scores than the US" when compared to all 90 participating countries. He added that "we are under-serving many students."

The PISA results emerge as the administration of US President Donald Trump is actively pursuing changes to the federal government's role in education. In March 2025, President Trump issued an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to initiate the process of dismantling the Department of Education.

Secretary McMahon stated that the federal education bureaucracy "has shortchanged our children and stifled our future." The White House has contended that federal education spending has been excessive and has not yielded improved standardized test scores. The Department of Education, established in 1979, oversees student achievement tracking, federal funding distribution, and civil rights enforcement in schools, though it does not set curricula or academic standards, which are typically managed at the state and local levels.

The substantial drop in reading scores, particularly the wide disparity between top and low performers—25.7 percent of US students ranked as low performers versus 13.3 percent as top performers—raises questions about the effectiveness of current educational strategies and the potential impact of proposed federal policy shifts.