Learning the right lesson from international education rankings

America’s students just notched their worst-ever math scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, the largest international study of teenagers’ academic abilities.

The continued downward slide in test scores, even after roughly $200 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds was pumped into education, tells us the system is broken.

If the system was underfunded, the largest infusion of education funding in our nation’s history would have made a dent in the problem. But test scores still fell 13 points in math and dropped slightly in reading and science after Congress approved it.