U.S. Students Above OECD Average in Science, Reading, and Computational Problem Solving

 

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) today released the U.S. results from the 2025 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international study of how 15-year-olds around the world apply their knowledge and skills to real-world challenges. Administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), PISA assesses student performance in science, mathematics, and reading. In 2025, 91 education systems participated, including 38 OECD member countries. U.S. students scored above the OECD average in science and reading, while the U.S. mathematics score was not significantly different from the OECD average. Average U.S. scores in science and mathematics were not measurably different from those in 2022, while the reading score was significantly lower than in 2022. PISA 2025 also introduced Learning in the Digital World, a new assessment that measures how students build knowledge and solve problems using digital tools. U.S. students scored above the OECD average in computational problem solving, one of the two reporting subscales of this new assessment. The report also examines longer-term trends across PISA cycles. The 2025 cycle was the largest in PISA's history, with more than 760,000 students participating across 91 education systems. PISA 2025 was the ninth cycle of the assessment, which was first administered in 2000. View the full report on the PISA 2025 U.S. Results page. Learn more about PISA.