US reading scores hit 25-year low as Trump pushes school choice

American 15-year-olds are reading worse than they have in roughly a quarter-century. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released its 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment results on Tuesday, and the numbers tell a stark story: reading scores in the United States dropped 14 points between 2022 and 2025, landing at levels not seen since around 2000. The decline was not unique to America—the OECD average across 23 countries fell 16 points in the same period—but the United States distinguished itself in a grimmer way. Among the 90 countries assessed, no nation showed a wider gap between its highest and lowest performers. Nearly one in four American students, 25.7 percent, ranked as low performers in reading. Only 13.3 percent reached the top tier.

Michael Kieffer, a literacy education professor at New York University, put the disparity plainly: looking across all participating nations, the United States had no peer when it came to the breadth of its reading inequality. "What is clear is that we are under-serving many students," he told Al Jazeera. The data arrived as the Trump administration was already moving to reshape how the country approaches education itself. In March 2025, President Trump issued an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin dismantling the Department of Education, the federal agency responsible for tracking student achievement, distributing education funds, and enforcing civil rights protections in schools. Trump cited the falling test scores as justification, calling the department an "entrenched bureaucracy" that had failed to deliver results despite spending more than $3 trillion since its founding in 1979.

It bears noting that the Education Department does not set school curricula or academic standards—those responsibilities have traditionally belonged to states and local districts. But the administration's argument was that federal oversight had become counterproductive, and that redistributing education authority to the states would unlock better outcomes. McMahon echoed this reasoning in a statement to Al Jazeera, describing the moment as "a stress test for our nation's future." She wrote that the country needed "a hard reset that stops protecting a failed status quo and instead builds a system that empowers state leaders and embraces innovative learning options through school choice."

School choice has become the administration's central education policy. The term describes the practice of redirecting public education funding toward alternatives—charter schools, private institutions, homeschooling, tutoring services—allowing parents to select where their children study rather than defaulting to neighborhood public schools. Supporters frame it as educational freedom. Critics argue it has weakened public education by diverting resources to less regulated systems that operate with minimal oversight. Since returning to office, Trump has made it a signature priority. Last year, the Education Department announced $500 million for its Charter School Program, described as the largest investment the initiative had ever received, earmarked for states to expand charter systems and fund new developers. In July 2025, Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act created the first federal tax credit for donations to organizations providing scholarships for primary and secondary students, including private-school tuition and tutoring.

Last month, Trump hosted a White House event celebrating school choice as the academic year began. Yet education experts warn that the policy direction may not address the root causes of declining performance. Mathias Cormann, the OECD Secretary-General, said in a statement that reversing the decline "is urgent." He pointed to what the most successful education systems actually do: they focus on fewer areas in greater depth, invest substantially in teachers, engage parents meaningfully, and provide targeted support to students and schools that need it most. The question now is whether a policy centered on choice and decentralization can deliver what the data suggests American students need: not more options, but deeper resources and more focused attention.