The 2023 round of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the world’s most comprehensive standardized evaluation of 15-year-olds’ academic proficiency, has delivered a stark warning to education systems across high-income economies: average scores in core subjects of math, reading, and science have hit their lowest point in the program’s 20+ year history.
Organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the 2023 assessment drew more than 760,000 participants across dozens of nations, with results published this week confirming widespread declines. Even in the United States, which placed within the global top 15 for science, reading, and the new computational problem-solving category, scores for reading and math have fallen to their lowest level since PISA launched in the early 2000s — a trend that was only masked slightly by broader declines across other developed nations. Researchers also note the U.S. results should be interpreted with caution, as the country failed to meet the study’s required sample size standards for participating schools and students.
What is driving this global slump in academic performance? OECD officials point to two interconnected factors: declining parental engagement in children’s learning, and unregulated overuse of digital and artificial intelligence tools in and out of the classroom.
An accompanying student survey paired with PISA assessments found that nearly every high-income country recorded a drop in family investment in education between 2018 (the last full PISA round) and 2023, with the sharpest disengagement observed among boys. This disengagement is measured by how frequently parents discuss schoolwork with their children or actively participate in their learning progress. Andreas Schleicher, director of the OECD’s education and skills division, notes that many parents have shifted their perspective from active co-participants in education to passive clients of school systems.
The performance gap tied to parental engagement is substantial. Even after adjusting for socioeconomic differences between students, teenagers who reported that a family member asks about their daily school experience at least once a week scored 35 points higher on the PISA science assessment than peers with less engaged families. That gap is equivalent to more than a year and a half of additional learning.
Digital distraction is the second major contributor to falling scores. More than one in four students across high-income countries reported that classmates are distracted by personal digital devices in most or every science class. Data confirms that nations with strict school policies governing cellphone use see significantly lower distraction rates. When it comes to leisure use of digital devices, the link between heavy use and lower test scores is clear, Schleicher says, though the picture is more mixed for educational digital use: students who used edtech for 2 to 3 hours per day during school saw small score gains, but performance drops sharply once use exceeds that threshold.
For artificial intelligence tools, the pattern mirrors that of general digital technology. Half of all students in developed economies now use AI chatbots for learning at least once a week, but the assessment found that higher AI use correlates with lower overall test scores, with students who never use chatbots outperforming their peers who use these tools regularly. That said, some nations have found a balanced, effective approach to integrating AI into learning: in China, Japan, Singapore, and Estonia, AI is used to support — not replace — teacher-led instruction. Schleicher highlighted one example from a Chinese elementary school, where students practice traditional ink calligraphy, and teachers use AI to scan and analyze student work to deliver personalized feedback on handwriting improvement — blending traditional teaching methods with AI-powered support, rather than letting technology lead classroom activity.
Top performing spots in the 2023 PISA rankings were once again dominated by East Asian economies. Mainland China (with four provinces, Hong Kong, and Macao participating), Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea took the highest overall marks, with Estonia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand also ranking among the top performers. Fewer than 10% of students in top-ranked East Asian nations reported classroom digital distraction, a fraction of the rate seen in North America and Western Europe. In the four participating Chinese provinces, nearly 100% of students scored at or above the baseline proficiency level for math and reading, compared to just 65% for math and 74% for reading in the U.S.
Education experts warn that the growing gap in academic performance between the U.S. and top-performing East Asian systems carries major long-term geopolitical implications. “To win a technological race, you need the people with the science and the technology and the reading capabilities,” said Tracey Burns, chief of global strategy and research at the National Center for Education and the Economy, an organization that studies high-performing education systems worldwide.