Falling PISA Test Scores in the Developed World:

Noah Smith:

"In my last roundup, I pointed out that American kids actually do pretty well on global test scores, except in math. But that’s a relative measure. In fact, test scores have been falling all over the developed world since around 2010:

Source: Derek Thompson

The U.S.’ good relative performance is partly because we’ve fallen a little less than other countries. In general, students are just not doing well, all over the globe.

Why? When you see an international trend like this, you should automatically be suspicious of political or institutional explanations, because those are country-specific. Woke politics or education funding cuts or whatever are highly unlikely to explain a trend this broad. Instead, we should look at technological trends, since in the absence of a world war, technology is the main thing that affects the whole developed world more or less simultaneously.

The timing of the dropoff makes it pretty clear what the chief suspect is here: Smartphones."