Test Scores Are Falling Around the World. Schools Need to Ask Why.

Summary for Educators

Based on: Jean M. Twenge
Source: Generation Tech
Article: Test Scores Keep Plunging Worldwide
Publication: September 2026

THE BIG IDEA

The latest international test results should concern school leaders for a simple reason: this is no longer just an American problem, nor can it be explained entirely by the pandemic.

More than 760,000 15-year-olds participated in the newest Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. Across highly developed economies, average scores in mathematics, reading, and science have now fallen to their lowest levels in PISA history. The United States continued to decline in reading and mathematics, while several East Asian systems—including Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and parts of China—remained among the strongest performers.

Jean Twenge’s central concern is that these declines fit a longer pattern. In earlier analyses, she showed that academic performance in the United States and Western Europe began weakening in the early-to-mid 2010s, years before COVID-19. She has pointed to growing smartphone, social-media, and recreational-device use as one plausible contributor, while the latest PISA data also raise questions about weakening family engagement and rapidly expanding AI use.

The leadership challenge is not simply to raise test scores. It is to identify what has changed in students’ lives and learning environments—and respond accordingly.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The decline is international. Average PISA scores across developed nations are now at historic lows in reading, mathematics, and science.

• COVID does not explain everything. Twenge has documented declines beginning around 2012–2013, well before school closures.

• Digital distraction deserves serious attention. In Twenge’s analysis of 36 countries, nations where students spent more school time using electronic devices for leisure experienced larger score declines.

• Family engagement may be weakening. The newest PISA accompanying surveys indicate declining parental interest and support in many affluent countries. Students receiving regular parental support performed substantially better in science.

• AI introduces another variable. Large numbers of students now report using chatbots for schoolwork, raising questions about how much cognitive work students themselves are actually doing.

WHY IT MATTERS

School leaders should resist the temptation to explain declining achievement with one convenient cause.

It would be easy to blame COVID. It would also be easy to blame phones, parents, curriculum, AI, absenteeism, or declining student motivation.

The more likely reality is that several forces are interacting.

Students today live in an environment with unprecedented access to entertainment, communication, and automated assistance. A difficult algebra problem competes with TikTok. A challenging reading assignment competes with YouTube. An essay prompt can now be answered by a chatbot before a student has wrestled with the question.

At the same time, schools themselves have increasingly moved reading, writing, assessment, communication, and homework onto screens.

Twenge’s international comparisons are especially provocative. Japan, where students report comparatively little recreational device use during school, has maintained stronger academic performance than many countries where students spend far more school time on devices. That does not prove that screens alone caused the decline, but it is powerful enough evidence that schools should investigate the relationship rather than dismiss it.

Principals therefore face a broader question:

Are the conditions of modern schooling helping students concentrate deeply enough to learn?

LEADERSHIP ACTIONS

1. Treat attention as an instructional resource.
Protect it just as deliberately as instructional time. A classroom in which students repeatedly shift between lessons, messages, games, and videos is unlikely to produce sustained thinking.

2. Examine recreational device use during school.
Schools increasingly adopting bell-to-bell phone restrictions should also consider what students can access on school-issued laptops and tablets.

3. Reconsider automatic screen use.
Digital does not automatically mean better. Encourage teachers to ask whether students would learn more effectively through paper, handwriting, face-to-face discussion, manipulatives, or direct instruction.

4. Watch what AI is replacing.
AI can support learning, but administrators should distinguish between using AI to extend student thinking and using it to eliminate thinking.

5. Reengage families academically.
Move beyond communicating only about schedules, discipline, and events. Help parents understand what their children are learning and provide simple ways for them to discuss schoolwork at home.

6. Track local indicators alongside test scores.
Examine reading volume, attendance, course failure, homework completion, classroom attention, device use, and student engagement. International trends matter most when leaders compare them with what is happening in their own buildings.

LEADER REFLECTION

Imagine walking through your school for an entire day.

How often would you see students reading something difficult for 20 uninterrupted minutes?

Writing several paragraphs without assistance?

Working through a challenging mathematics problem before receiving help?

Talking face-to-face with classmates about an academic question?

Sitting with confusion long enough to figure something out?

Those experiences may sound ordinary, but in an increasingly distracted and automated world, they are becoming extraordinarily important.

Schools cannot control every influence on young people.

They can, however, control what happens during six or seven hours each day.

The international decline in achievement should therefore prompt something more useful than panic over rankings. It should provoke an honest examination of the learning environment we have created.

Great schools may increasingly distinguish themselves not by how much technology they provide, but by how deliberately they protect students’ attention, effort, reading, thinking, and human connection.

Original Article

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com