US students stagnant in math and reading scores over last decade: exam

An international exam measuring student achievement around the world found that U.S. students have largely not improved since 2000, despite efforts to boost reading and math skills among American children.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test results released Tuesday show that U.S. students were slightly above average in terms of reading ability but below the math skills level of peer nations.

The test, which was administered to U.S. 15-year-olds, also revealed a widening achievement gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students, with as many as a fifth of 15-year-olds in the U.S. not reading at a 10-year-old’s level.

The U.S. scored about the same as Japan and the United Kingdom on the test, which in 2018 primarily focused on reading ability, while several Chinese provinces as well as countries such as Sweden and Ireland scored higher than the U.S.

One Harvard education professor told The New York Times that the exam’s results showed that educators in the U.S. were not implementing Common Core standards, which were meant to boost U.S. students’ competitiveness around the world, efficiently.

“It’s really time to rethink the entire drift of policy reform because it just isn’t working,” Daniel Koretz told the Times.