The gap in math achievement between the United States and China has widened to more than seven years. China surged ahead while the U.S. moved backward, prompting warnings of an education crisis.
China posted an average math score of 612 in the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), ranking first among 91 participating countries, The Wall Street Journal reported on the 16th. The score was 21 points higher than in 2018, equivalent to about a year of additional learning.
The U.S., by contrast, scored 463, down 15 points, a setback equal to nine months of learning. The math gap between the two countries widened to more than seven years. Among top performers, 54% of Chinese students reached the highest achievement level, compared with 8% in the U.S. China also ranked first in science with an average of 597, nearly 100 points above the U.S. score of 502.
In an editorial, the Journal said this explains why American companies look overseas to hire highly skilled workers. U.S. schools are not producing enough students with advanced engineering and math skills, it said.
Higher spending per student does not necessarily translate into stronger academic performance, and simply increasing budgets is unlikely to solve the problem, the editorial said. While the U.S. has rolled out industrial policies in semiconductors, artificial intelligence and other fields to counter China, it has paid relatively little attention to education.
South Korea trailed China but outperformed the U.S. Its average math score of 522 was 90 points below China's 612 and 59 points above the U.S. score of 463. In science, Korea's 526 was 71 points behind China's 597 but 24 points ahead of the U.S. score of 502.
