NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, is our de facto national test: the only assessment given the same way to a national sample of 4th and 8th graders since 1990 (12th graders are tested less often and are not shown). It is also the benchmark for how U.S. student performance is tracked over time and compared to their peers in other countries. Scores run from 0 to 500; a ten-point move is about a year of learning.
Latest data: 2024 results, released January 29, 2025 (the Nation's Report Card). The 2026 assessment was given to about 600,000 4th and 8th graders between January and March 2026; results are due in early 2027 and will appear here when the data service carries them.
The same NAEP results from 2013 on, the year the mean lines turned, with each group plotted as its change in points from 2013. Percentiles show where in the distribution the movement is; parents' education and school-lunch eligibility are NAEP's two measures of family background.
PISA tests 15-year-olds, whatever grade they are in (mostly 10th grade in the United States), in about eighty countries every three years on the same scale. The OECD average is set near 500; thirty points is roughly a school year.
Current expenditure per pupil in public elementary and secondary schools, in constant dollars, so the line shows real money, not inflation.
NAEP figures are the national public-school mean scale scores from the main assessments, pulled from the Nation's Report Card data service. 1990 to 1994 are the samples without testing accommodations; every later year includes them. Grade 8 reading was not assessed in 2000. The long-term-trend NAEP, which goes back to the early 1970s, is a different instrument and is not shown here.
PISA means are the OECD's published country averages. The series for every round through 2025 comes from the trend tables in PISA 2025 Results, Volume I (Annex B1, tables I.B1.2a.36 to 38, CC BY 4.0), with Our World in Data and the World Bank filling any country or round the tables leave out. "OECD average" is the OECD's own figure for each round, so its membership changes over time; where the OECD publishes none for a round, it is the mean of members with a score. Countries the OECD marks with an asterisk for sampling problems in 2025, the United States among them, are shown as published. The U.S. 2018 reading result carries a similar caveat. Rankings count OECD members with a score in that round.
Spending is current expenditure per pupil in fall enrollment from the NCES Digest of Education Statistics, table 236.55, in constant dollars of the latest school year in the table. Current expenditure leaves out construction and debt service. The international comparison is the OECD's expenditure per full-time-equivalent student in primary through post-secondary non-tertiary education, constant 2020 prices, converted at purchasing-power parity, from Education at a Glance via the OECD data API. Each source is re-fetched on a schedule; the stamp at the top is the last run.