American Students Have a Math Problem

The latest global overview of the performance of 15-year-olds declines in mathematics achievement in the United States and stagnation in science and reading.

"We are losing ground - a troubling prospect when, in today's knowledge-based economy, the best jobs can go anywhere in the world," said Education Secretary John B. King Jr. "Students in Massachusetts, Maryland and Minnesota aren 't just Compete for big jobs with their neighbors or through state lines, they have to be competitive with peers in Finland, Germany and Japan.

Math was a tenacious concern. "This pattern we see in mathematics seems to be consistent with what we have seen in previous evaluations ... everything is just going down," said Peggy Carr, Acting Commissioner at the National Center for Education Statistics.

The 2015 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, is the latest to document that US students are underperforming their peers in several Asian countries. The United States was below the international average in mathematics and the average in science and reading. Singapore was the most successful in the three subjects on the PISA test.

More than half a million 15-year-old students in about 70 countries and education systems participated in the review, coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)