We need to talk about test scores

The declines go beyond pandemic effects

Amid all of the other news in recent months, one story seemed to get lost: The academic performance of American 4th and 8^th graders is at its lowest level in decades, and students in Europe aren’t doing very well either. When these trends were covered in the press, the focus was almost exclusively on pandemic learning loss. That’s a factor, but it’s far from the whole story.

In the 1990s and 2000s, student academic performance was improving: Standardized test scores were up in subjects such as math, reading, and science. That started to change in the early to mid-2010s. If that time period sounds familiar, it should be: That’s when smartphones became popular, daily social media use moved from optional to nearly mandatory among teens, teen sleep deprivation rose, and teen depression skyrocketed.

The PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) project gives standardized tests in math, reading, and science to 16-year-olds around the world. In Western Europe, science scores peaked in 2012. They declined 16 points between 2012 and 2018 and then a further 3 points into 2022. Math scores peaked in 2009; they were about the same in 2012 and declined 5 points between 2012 and 2018, declining 19 points into 2022. Reading scores peaked in 2015. Between 2012 and 2018, they declined 11 points, and declined a further 13 points into 2022 (see Figure 1).