We are in a full-blown crisis here, and we can’t ignore it anymore.
Clearly, yet another generation of Americans is receiving inferior education and that is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE. It’s not only completely unacceptable… it’s downright embarrassing.
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that measures the reading, mathematics, and science literacy of 15-year-old students. Unlike other modern-day assessment tests, PISA questions do not measure memorization of facts. Instead, the questions measure real-world problem solving and critical thinking skills. Read: Volume One, Volume Two, Volume Three
Highlights from the latest PISA report:
U.S. students ranked 28th out of 37 OECD member countries in math, representing the lowest U.S. math scores since the test was first taken in 2003. Over a third of American 15-year-olds were “low performers,” meaning they were unable to do things like compare distances between two routes or convert prices into a different currency. Only seven percent of the American students could do math at advanced levels.
Half of 15-year-olds in Hong Kong performed as well or better than the wealthiest 10 percent of American students in math.
There is a significant domestic gender divide. Ten percent (10%) of our boys scored at the highest level, compared with 5 percent of our girls.
Black and Hispanic American students performed, on average, far below Asian and white students, and American students from low-income backgrounds scored lower than the more affluent ones.
United States students ranked 9th in reading and 16th in science. Students from India and mainland China did not take the 2022 PISA test but, in 2018, China was first in all three categories (math, reading and science).
Guys, we CANNOT allow this to continue. If we don’t turn this around – FAST – we will lose our global competitive advantage and NEVER get it back.
These disastrous scores from the NAEP and PISA are not just inconsequential numbers in some tired old reports. They mirror what is actually happening IRL (in real life) – and the harsh realities of our bleak situation are already coming into sharp relief. It’s not just the University of California at San Diego that’s having to adjust. Many companies are now having to provide foundational learning classes for their employees (i.e., things like reading, writing, and basic math), and the U.S. military, the nation’s largest employer, is now forced to offer academic prep courses for potential recruits after scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test continue to decline.
Then there is this reality. In a Fox News interview in November 2025, President Trump said that the United States doesn’t have workers with “certain talents” to fill jobs needed domestically. In response, Fox host Laura Ingraham said, “We have plenty of talented people here.” To which Donald Trump replied, “No, you don’t, no you don’t… you don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn. You can’t take people off an unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory where we’re going to make missiles.’”
Laura Ingraham is right: We do “have plenty of talented people here.” But Donald Trump is also correct when he says we don’t have enough people with “certain talents.” Simply put, we are focusing on the wrong things for the future.
A report from the professional services organization Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute estimates there could be as many as 3.8 million jobs in the U.S. manufacturing industry between 2024 and 2033. That’s exciting! However, the report also warns that over 1.9 million of these jobs could go unfilled if the employee skills gap is not addressed. Sixty-five percent of employers surveyed said attracting and retaining talent is their number one business challenge.
We have to recognize and respond to the fact that our job market is rapidly shifting, and we must do whatever it takes to ensure a flexible, dynamic labor market and a well-trained, adaptable workforce.
Combined, globalization and technology make drastic alterations to our educational curriculum an urgent priority. There has been a 75 percent increase in demand, for example, for simulation and simulation software skills in the last five years. Jobs like statisticians, data scientists, engineers, computer and information systems managers, software developers, logisticians, and industrial maintenance technicians are increasingly needed, as are semiconductor processing technicians, machinists, welders, first-line supervisors, and electronics and electromechanical assemblers.
Without a doubt, we can fill this skill void by implementing new courses of study beginning in high school that give our kids the vocational and technological tools necessary to succeed in high-tech workplaces.
Luckily, our universities are still considered to be the best in the world, which is why the Trump/Vance administration needs to back off its attacks on them. The top three universities on the 2025 Shanghai Ranking Consultancy’s list of the world’s best universities – Harvard, Stanford and MIT – are in the United States. In fact, we have 16 out of the top 25 spots.
However, our continued success in higher education depends on the skill level of future American students, which is what makes the USC report such a flaming red flag. If the talent of our graduating students continues to diminish, our institutions of higher learning will have to progressively rely on foreign students to maintain their superiority (and we already rely on them heavily!).