New results from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) offer a sobering signal. Across OECD countries, average performance among 15-year-olds reached its lowest recorded level in mathematics and reading in 2025. Since 2015, reading scores have fallen 28 points, equivalent to roughly a year and a half of learning, while mathematics scores have fallen 22 points, or just over a year of learning. Science performance has also declined over the decade, although the most recent results held broadly stable. Today, one in five students across the OECD is a low performer in all three subjects, a one-quarter increase since 2022.
In the United States, students continue to perform above the OECD average in reading and science and close to the OECD average in mathematics. But since 2015, U.S. mathematics and reading performance have each fallen 7 points, while the share of students performing below the baseline level has grown by six percentage points in mathematics and seven percentage points in reading.
The OECD found that declines in reading are particularly pronounced on tasks requiring students to evaluate and reflect, integrate information across multiple sources, and sustain attention through longer texts. The study also found an increase in "hasty" responses: students answering quickly and incorrectly rather than engaging with difficult questions. These are precisely the capabilities that will become increasingly valuable as AI takes on more routine cognitive work and extends further into analytical, professional, and technical tasks.
The more capable our technology becomes, the greater the premium on human judgment. From a competitiveness standpoint, how do we build a workforce capable of learning and adapting at the pace of technological change?
