According to a new book published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States had the same percentage of low-performing 15-year-olds on international reading and math tests in 2012 than it did in 2003. On the bright side, there was a 6 percentage point decrease in low-performing science students.
According to an Education Week report,
America was flat during that period, remaining a little worse than the international average in the share of students who performed below minimum proficiency in all three subjects.
Among U.S. 15-year-olds, 26 percent were low-performing in math, 17 percent in reading, and 18 percent in science. More than 1 in 10—some 95,000 students—scored low on all three subjects.
Those are sobering figures, to say the least.