U.S. PISA reading scores fell from 2022, with 26% of students below the baseline proficiency level
State of Us · Friday, 11 September 2026
Why it matters
The fall in U.S. reading performance and the 26% low-performer share are direct indicators of deteriorating educational outcomes, while the faster declines elsewhere show why international rankings alone can misrepresent whether conditions are improving. The reported disparities make this relevant to tracking whether national education trends are being distributed unevenly across student groups.
What happened
The 2025 PISA results found that U.S. 15-year-olds’ reading scores fell sharply from 2022, and 26% of U.S. test-takers scored below PISA’s level-2 baseline. The United States nevertheless rose in relative standing because other countries’ scores declined faster, so the ranking improvement does not indicate an absolute U.S. gain. EdTrust also points to continued reading declines in the latest NAEP results and says the effects are disproportionately concentrated among students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, and multilingual learners, but this article provides no demographic figures for those gaps.
Previously
9 Sep 2026 — U.S. PISA standing rises as other countries’ scores fall faster.(cbnewsletters.chalkbeat.org)
4 Sep 2026 — The OECD reported that trends in PISA results and adult-skills assessments often diverge.(theeconomyofmeaning.com)
Players & places
- United States
- EdTrust
- Trump administration