A snapshot of America’s schools: Trends and global comparisons

America is not pleased with its schools.

A Gallup poll conducted in August 2026 found that only 8% of adults are “completely satisfied” and 24% are “somewhat satisfied” with the quality of K-12 education in the U.S. today. That combined total of 32% is the lowest level of satisfaction that Gallup has measured in nearly three decades of annual polling on this question. It represents a precipitous drop since the onset of COVID-19—a drop now evident among both Democrats and Republicans. Recent poll results from Pew and PDK are similarly bleak.

Discontent with the nation’s schools is evident in (and, likely, fueled by) prolonged culture-war conflicts over issues related to race, gender, and sexuality. It’s also evident in the language used by a wide variety of leaders to describe the nation’s schools. President Trump has decried America’s education system as “dead last” in performance despite being “the most expensive” system in the world. (We’ll scrutinize those claims shortly.) Education reformers and researchers have referred to this era as a “learning recession” or “education depression.” It’s hard to find prominent voices in education—from the political left, center, or right—saying that all is well.

To get out of the slump we’re in, we need to understand the nature of that slump. That is, we need to be sure that our critiques of the nation’s education system are tethered to what the best available data and evidence say about where we stand.

That is the focus of this report. It provides a 30,000-foot view of America’s schools, largely through a series of charts. We examine trends in student outcomes—overall and by subgroup—and place those outcomes in the context of other countries’ performance. We also examine indicators of students’ well-being and how U.S. students are spending their time.

The result is a troubling—but nuanced—portrait of how America’s students are doing. For example, in some areas we are performing well relative to peer countries, even if we still have room to improve. In other areas, we are performing poorly by any reasonable measure.  

Our key takeaways are the following: 

• NAEP scores show years of academic progress in the early 2000s giving way to steep declines. Math and reading scores for 4th and 8th graders rose substantially during the late 1990s and early 2000s before plateauing around 2013. They began to slide shortly afterward, plummeted during the pandemic, and have since recovered only modestly, if at all. While COVID-19 clearly hurt student performance, scores began declining well before the pandemic. 
• America’s 15-year-olds compare favorably with peer countries in reading and science but poorly in math. On PISA 2025, the U.S. ranked 6th in reading and 7th in science when compared with 23 OECD countries. We have steadily improved our standing in those comparisons over the last two decades, though that is largely attributable to steep declines across OECD-23 countries in recent years. In math, the U.S. continues to perform poorly relative to peer countries, placing 16th of 24 on PISA 2025. 
• Achievement gaps have remained stubbornly large, and the gap between our high and low scorers now far exceeds that of most peer countries. Test score gaps by race, ethnicity, and economic disadvantage remain large and are not narrowing at a pace sufficient to close them in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, scores for the lowest-performing students (10th percentile) have dropped sharply over the last decade, while scores for the highest performers (90th percentile) have held fairly steady. America’s 90-10 gaps have widened far more rapidly than those in peer countries—and now stand out in international comparisons. 
• U.S. students are negative outliers on self-reported well-being and time spent on screens. America’s 15-year-olds rank near the bottom of OECD countries on PISA’s measure of well-being, as they have for some time. They stand out in how often they report feeling like outsiders, out of place, and lonely at school. This is consistent with other measures that indicate very high rates of youth depression and student disengagement in the US. American students are also outliers in the amount of time they report spending on social media and playing video games relative to 15-year-olds in peer countries. 

The data in this report do not point conclusively to any single cause of our schools’ challenges, nor to any silver-bullet solution. They do, however, offer a clearer view of where we stand and the work that lies ahead. 

Declines on the NAEP that predate the pandemic

We begin by examining trends in academic performance, for which the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a natural starting point. Known as “the nation’s report card,” NAEP periodically tests and surveys representative samples of U.S. students. Its results shape public narratives about how America’s schools are performing and which states are over- or underachieving. Recent releases, for example, have prompted consternation about national trends and intrigue about relatively strong performances in states such as Mississippi, Louisiana, and Massachusetts.

These first results will be familiar to many readers: math and reading trends for grades 4 and 8. NAEP’s scales are not easy to interpret, but as a benchmark, 8th graders have historically outscored 4th graders by about 40 points. Because the grades are four years apart, that gap implies about 10 points of learning in a typical year. The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford measured this more precisely and estimates that a year of learning equates to 10.4 NAEP points in math 11.2 NAEP points in reading.

Figure 1 plots average scores from 1996 to 2024.

Across grades and subjects, the pattern is broadly similar. Average scores rose—in some cases sharply—in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They started to plateau around 2013, began to slide shortly thereafter, plummeted during the pandemic, and have since recovered only modestly, if at all.

NAEP is not designed for drawing conclusions about the causes of test score changes over time, as tempting as that may be. Still, a few events from this period are worth noting.

The first is the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2002, along with related school accountability policies that many states adopted in the preceding years. NCLB is the kind of policy one might expect to raise 4th and 8^th grade NAEP scores. It pushed states to set content standards for grades 3 through 8 (and 10) and to hold schools accountable for students’ mastery of that material. It also created incentives to move students over state-defined “proficiency” thresholds, which may have steered resources toward low-scoring students. This does not mean NCLB was good for America’s schools on balance. That question remains fiercely debated. However, the best available evidence indicates that it likely raised test scores, especially near the bottom of the test score distribution.

The second is the Great Recession, which ran from late 2007 to mid-2009. Child poverty increased over this period. At the same time, school spending declined by about 7%, which may (or may not) have contributed to declining test scores and widening achievement gaps. The recession also serves to underscore the point that schools do not exist in a vacuum but are subject to broader societal forces.

The third is the COVID-19 pandemic. Most schools quickly moved to online learning in response to the pandemic, and many stayed there for an extended period. This shift, along with other harms brought on by COVID-19, undermined student learning and mental health, especially among marginalized students.

Of course, the last two decades brought many other changes, too. This includes the rise of cellphones and social media, which we return to later. In a recent paper, James Wyckoff of the University of Virginia argues that the field still lacks a clear account of why NAEP scores have fallen. He cautions against overemphasizing the role of COVID-19, noting that the downward trend from 2013 to 2019 would have predicted roughly half of the declines since 2020.¹

Achievement gaps that remain stubbornly wide

Average NAEP scores tell only part of the story. Stubbornly large gaps between historically advantaged and marginalized groups, and growing gaps between our highest and lowest scorers, are also important characteristics of this period.

Figure 2 shows NAEP scores from 1996 to 2024, disaggregated by socioeconomic status. Here, too, we show 4th and 8^th grade scores in math and reading.

Gaps between economically advantaged and disadvantaged students remained large and mostly steady over this period. However, caveats apply. First, NAEP’s measure of economic disadvantage has changed over time.² Second, NAEP offers only one view of the complicated picture of income-based achievement gaps (albeit a useful one). Researchers using different income and test score measures have sometimes reached very different conclusions about these gaps.

Next, we look at NAEP scores disaggregated by race and ethnicity. These scores appear in Figure 3.

Here, too, we see large, persistent gaps. Students who identify as Asian/Pacific Islander, white, or multiracial have consistently and substantially outscored those who identify as Hispanic, Black, or American Indian/Alaska Native.

Figure 4 draws on Figures 2 and 3 to show how gaps between various student subgroups, measured in standard deviations, have changed over time. As a very rough rule of thumb, an average year of learning between 4^th and 8^th grade equates to about one-third of a standard deviation.

The story is consistent across these comparisons. At the current slow pace of progress, these gaps will persist for many years to come.

A growing “90-10” gap between high and low scorers

Next, we turn to a comparison that has featured prominently in recent NAEP discussions: the widening gap between high scorers (students at the 90th percentile) and low scorers (students at the 10th percentile). Unlike the gaps just discussed, this one does not compare defined groups of students based on their background characteristics. It compares students at the top and bottom of the score distribution itself. The concern is that today’s struggling students are falling further and further behind.

Figure 5 shows trends in this 90-10 gap over the last two decades.

Of particular concern is the sharp drop in 10th percentile scores over the last decade (with scores in the 90th percentile mostly stable). Today’s lowest-scoring students perform substantially worse than their counterparts a decade ago.

Below, we present data from international assessments showing that ballooning 90-10 test score gaps are largely an American phenomenon. Many OECD countries have seen test score declines in recent years, and some have seen a widening gap between their high and low scorers. Few, if any, have seen their 90-10 performance diverge as rapidly as they have in the U.S.

Strong performance in reading and science, weak in math

Placing America’s performance in an international context helps to illuminate where our trends and challenges may be uniquely American and where they may reflect wider challenges.

Currently, there are two major international assessments of student performance: the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). PISA is more useful for our purposes because it is administered by the OECD, whose members are mostly economically prosperous countries and thus a reasonable comparison group for the United States. PISA also has 23 countries that have consistently participated in the assessment for the last decade and a half (PISA labels this group as the OECD-23).³

TIMSS, however, offers a useful starting point because of its similarities to NAEP. It tests students in grades 4 and 8 and, unlike PISA, is designed to measure mastery of material taught in schools.

Figure 6 shows U.S. average math scores for grades 4 and 8. The faded lines in the background show corresponding results for the small number of OECD-23 countries that participated in TIMSS throughout the years displayed. (We will have a more useful set of comparison countries momentarily, once we get to the PISA results.)

Trends in TIMSS scores for the U.S. roughly mirror those for NAEP math results (Figure 1). That is, we see steady gains in the early 2000s followed by plateauing scores and then declines that accelerated with the pandemic.

For richer international comparisons, we turn to PISA. Like NAEP, PISA tests a sample of students every few years and is designed to compare students’ knowledge, skills, and perspectives across time and place. Unlike NAEP, it tests 15-year-olds and focuses less on mastery of specific content than on assessing “key knowledge and skills essential for full participation in social and economic life.” Tom Loveless contrasts the tests’ philosophy and scope. TIMSS, he notes, measures how well students have learned the school curriculum, whereas PISA measures whether they can apply what they know—whether learned in or out of school—to real-world problems.

The next figures compare U.S. students with the OECD countries that have consistently participated in PISA over the past two decades. Notably, U.S. students fare very differently across the three subjects tested: math, reading, and science.

Figure 7 shows math trends. The orange line is the U.S. average, and the solid blue line is the average for OECD countries that took part in every PISA math assessment from 2003 to 2025. Each faded blue line shows an individual country.

The United States is—and long has been—a low scorer in math. In 2003, we ranked 19th of the 24 countries in this cohort. By 2025, our rank had risen to 16th, though our average score slid. This reflects declining math scores across the OECD countries.

We should note that these PISA trends diverge somewhat from the trends we saw in NAEP math (Figure 1). America’s NAEP scores rapidly climbed in the early 2000s before peaking around 2013. Given that the 8th graders tested by NAEP are only a year or two younger than the 15-year-olds tested by PISA, it is not immediately clear why the NAEP gains are not evident in PISA. One possibility is that this reflects quirks in what PISA assesses (relative to NAEP), as discussed by Loveless.

America’s 15-year-olds stack up much more favorably in reading. Figure 8 shows results for the U.S. and the other 23 OECD countries that took part in every PISA reading assessment from 2000 to 2025.⁴

In reading, the U.S. climbed from 13th of 24 in 2000 to 6th in 2025. This came despite relatively flat scores and then a post-COVID-19 decline. As in math, the climb reflects other countries’ declines more than U.S. gains. Across the OECD, reading scores began falling before the pandemic and dropped sharply afterward, as both the dark blue average line and the downward arc of the faded lines show.

In science, America’s average score has risen over the past two decades, and our corresponding rank has jumped from 19th of 24 in 2006 to 7th in 2025 (see Figure 9).

Stepping back, these PISA results indicate real differences across subjects in how U.S. 15-year-olds’ scores stack up against their peers in OECD countries. American students continue to lag in math but hold their own in reading and science, albeit partly because of the comparison countries’ recent performance slides.

Next, we turn to a clearer area of concern: the growing gaps between our high- and low-scoring students.

Larger “90-10” gaps between high and low scorers than peer countries

Our discussion of the NAEP trends noted a recent widening of the gap between high-performing students (90th percentile) and low-performing students (10th percentile). The TIMSS and PISA results show that the U.S. is an outlier in this regard.

Let’s start with a look at the most recent PISA reading results. This is a subject where, on average, the U.S. is performing well relative to peer countries. Figure 10 presents each country’s range of scores from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile. By default, the chart is sorted by countries’ 10th-percentile scores, which places the U.S. very near the OECD average. However, the U.S. has the largest difference between its 10th and 90th percentiles relative to these OECD countries. In fact, our 90th-percentile performers score higher than every country except New Zealand.  

We see similarly wide 90-10 bars for the U.S. when we look at PISA math, PISA science, and TIMSS 4th grade math, and TIMSS 8th grade math. (Click the links to open the charts for those various tests.)

What is even more striking is how quickly America’s 90-10 gaps have widened relative to other OECD countries. Figures 11 (math), 12 (reading), and 13 (science) show countries’ PISA 90-10 gaps from the early 2000s to 2025.

America’s 90-10 gaps have widened far more rapidly than those in other OECD countries, especially in reading and science. The gaps are all U-shaped, and they all started to climb in the early-to-mid-2010s.

PISA, like NAEP, is not designed to identify the causes of the patterns it reveals. We should note, though, that the timing of the U.S. uptick roughly corresponds with possible U.S.-specific factors (e.g., the end of the NCLB era) and with possible global factors (e.g., the rise of social media). Other OECD countries’ 90-10 gaps have grown over the last 10 to 15 years but far more slowly than America’s gaps.

We just saw one area where the United States is a negative outlier in international comparisons (90-10 test score gaps). Unfortunately, student well-being is another.

Disconcerting evidence on students’ sense of belonging and mental health

Alongside its assessments, PISA surveys 15-year-olds on a wide range of topics, including their perceptions of school, experiences outside school, and time use. These are self-reported measures, but they are measured consistently across time (year) and place (country).

We begin with PISA’s composite measure of well-being. This measure is based on students’ responses to six questions, which we detail below. Since PISA has asked these questions for several years, we can track trends and compare countries. We do this in Figure 14.

In 2025, America’s 15-year-olds scored near the bottom of participating OECD countries on this well-being measure. Unfortunately, the U.S. has ranked near the bottom on this measure for some time.

Figure 15 shows 2025 PISA results for the six questions that feed into this composite measure of well-being. If student well-being were high, responses would approach 0%for the top three items and 100%for the bottom three items.

U.S. students compare the least favorably on the top three items. Our 15-year-olds are outliers in how they report feeling like an outsider at school, awkward and out of place at school, and lonely at school.

These results echo troubling findings in a recent report from the State of the Nation Project. That report compares the United States with other countries around the world on measures ranging from greenhouse gas emissions to press freedom. It shows that youth depression is among the categories in which the U.S. fares the worst relative to other countries. (The U.S. compares more favorably in academic performance and educational attainment.) The report’s authors note that youth depression began rising around 2007, especially among girls. That timing coincides with expanded cellphone use, though the authors caution that causal evidence remains limited.

Signs of disengagement and far more screen time than peer countries

Recently, education experts have raised concerns about declines in student engagement. Some of the concern centers on attendance, which dropped sharply during the pandemic. But there’s also a broader worry that students aren’t meaningfully engaged even when they are in school. For example, in “The Disengaged Teen,” Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson examine how adolescents navigate their middle and high school years. They find that far too few students are driven by curiosity and genuinely invested in their learning (what Winthrop and Anderson call “explorer mode”).

Here, we look at data from a variety of sources to get a clearer picture of student engagement. We begin with attendance.

Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute has tracked chronic absenteeism (the share of students missing at least 10%of the school year) from before the pandemic to the present. As Figure 16 shows, rates spiked after the pandemic and have fallen only slowly since, suggesting they may settle well above their pre-pandemic baseline.

Next, we look to PISA for indicators of student engagement. The PISA data offer a mixed picture of how America’s 15-year-olds compare with their OECD peers.

As Figure 17 shows, about one-third of U.S. 15-year-olds admit to having skipped at least one day of school in the last two weeks. This exceeds most peer countries. On an item that asks whether they had skipped a class (not the full day), the U.S. is near the middle of the pack.

America’s teens stand out much more in the time they report spending on screens and social media. They are outliers in the share of students that report spending at least five hours per day playing video games, browsing social media, and communicating and sharing content on social media (Figure 18).⁵

Excessive screen time and social media use are widely speculated to be harmful to children. Researchers have noted that declines in student learning and mental health coincided with upticks in time spent on devices and social media. Wyckoff, while noting that the causal evidence on these questions is still developing, describes a “strong intuition and correlational evidence of the negative effects of smart-phones and social media on the learning development of students.”

Technology use could affect students in both direct and indirect ways. For example, students could consume content on social media that has direct, negative effects on their body image. Less directly, time spent on devices could displace positive activities such as sleep, physical activity, and socializing with peers.

One activity that American children are spending much less time on than they once did is reading for pleasure. The NAEP student questionnaire has, for decades, asked students how often they read for fun on their own time. The percentage of 9- and 13-year-olds who report reading every day has plummeted since about 2012. These trends appear in Figure 19.

To be clear, PISA and other assessments ask hundreds of questions between them, and we cannot cover the responses to all those questions in one report. On many of these measures, the U.S. does not stand out. Still, the data raise real concerns about American students’ well-being, both in absolute terms and relative to their peers abroad. The U.S. is an outlier in its rates of youth depression, share of students who report little sense of belonging, and time spent on video games and social media.

Taking stock of what we’re getting and what we’re spending

This report opened by noting that President Trump has described American education as “dead last” in the world. The evidence above shows that the claim is accurate in some respects and inaccurate in many others.

Academically, American students’ performance declined sharply after the onset of the pandemic, following a long period of stagnation and slow decline. But those declines were not unique to the United States, and U.S. students compare favorably with their peers in some subjects, especially reading and science. (We perform much worse in math.)

Where the U.S. is an outlier is in the widening gap between its highest- and lowest-scoring students, as defined by 90th- and 10th-percentile scorers, respectively. Far too many U.S. students are falling well behind their higher-achieving peers, and this pattern looks substantially worse in the U.S. than in its peer countries. Addressing this must be a priority for leaders in education and public policy.

This is not the only area of immediate concern. The U.S. is also an outlier in youth well-being and mental health—a problem that predates the pandemic, has grown more serious since, and requires a concerted response of its own. In fact, in international comparisons, the United States looks considerably worse on measures of mental health than measures of academic performance.

We also can evaluate the other side of the president’s claim, which is that the U.S. has the world’s most expensive education system. This, too, is an exaggeration. As Figure 20 shows, U.S. education spending is comparable to that of many peer countries, both as a share of GDP and per pupil.

What is true, however, is that we could and should be getting a whole lot more for our investment.

A changing landscape for K-12 education

The challenges outlined in this report are complex. They are the product of many different factors, some that have roots in education policy and practice and others that do not. They would be hard to solve at any time. Current changes in the educational landscape make this work even more difficult.

One such change is the arrival of AI in our schools. AI brings vast risks along with vast opportunities. Maximizing its benefits while minimizing its harms, and ensuring that those benefits reach all students rather than just the most advantaged, may be the defining challenge for the next generation of education reform.

The second is rapid change in how many states govern and fund their education systems. As public sentiment toward America’s schools soured, many states have turned to universal school choice programs that redirect funds from public to private schools. Combined with enrollment declines, this trend leaves many systems facing potentially severe budget cuts and instability.

The problems facing America’s schools are serious, but we have solved serious problems before. After a period defined by culture-war conflicts, we need a renewed and sustained focus on what matters most: ensuring that every student has the opportunity to learn and flourish.