Beyond the Headlines: What the Latest PISA Results Mean for Moravian Academy Students

In early September, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the results of PISA 2025, the world's largest international assessment of 15-year-olds. The headlines were sobering: reading scores in the United States have fallen to near their lowest point in a quarter century, and math and reading results have continued to slide across much of the developed world.

Many of you have seen these reports, and some of you have asked what they mean for your children. This letter is our answer. We want to explain what the national data show and why experts believe scores are falling. We also want to share, with real evidence, why Moravian students are on a very different path, and how that path begins in our youngest classrooms.

PISA tests reading, mathematics, and science every three years. The 2025 round was the largest ever, with more than 760,000 students from 91 countries and economies taking part.

Across OECD countries, the long-term trend is clearly downward. Between 2015 and 2025, average reading scores fell 28 points and math scores fell 22 points, while science held roughly steady. Reading saw the steepest decline, which matters because reading underpins learning in every other subject.

In the United States, reading scores dropped 14 points from 2022, landing among the lowest results the country has recorded since it first took part in PISA in 2000. About one in four American 15-year-olds did not reach PISA's baseline level of reading proficiency, and only about 65% reached the baseline in math. The U.S. still scored above the OECD average in reading and science, but largely because other countries declined even faster. As The Hill and others reported, the results have prompted a broader national conversation about the state of American schooling.

The OECD report and the commentary around it point to several connected causes:

Education International's General Secretary summed up the lesson simply: now more than ever, students need teachers, and the student-teacher relationship is the heart of learning.

That diagnosis, distraction, overreliance on technology, and weakened relationships between students and teachers, describes exactly the conditions Moravian has worked deliberately to counter.

No single Upper School assessment maps directly onto PISA. Instead, we look at several nationally benchmarked measures together, alongside the work students are doing every day. The results provide evidence that Moravian students are developing many of the skills and dispositions that PISA results suggest are increasingly difficult for students to sustain nationally.

SAT results provide a broad snapshot, but they are only one measure of student learning. Moravian students also engage in advanced academic work across a wide range of disciplines. In May 2026, 116 students, over 80% of juniors and seniors, took 280 AP exams across a broad range of subjects. Twenty-four students earned AP Scholar with Distinction and 15 earned AP Scholar with Honor. Moravian students also earn consistent recognition through the National Merit Scholarship Program, with students named Semifinalists and Finalists each year; Semifinalists represent fewer than 1% of U.S. high school seniors; in Moravian's Class of 2026, 6.5% of our students earned that distinction.

SAT results

Taken together, these results provide evidence not only of strong overall academic performance, but of broad participation in challenging coursework. The more important question, however, is what students are being asked to do every day that contributes to these outcomes.

PISA's steepest declines are in reading. The OECD report connects them to less reading for pleasure, more digital distraction, and greater difficulty sustaining attention. In Moravian's Upper School, the opposite habits are core expectations rather than occasional enrichment. Students read complex texts closely, write frequently and at length, revise their thinking, evaluate primary and secondary sources, and build evidence-based arguments.

AP English Language and AP U.S. History both depend on these skills. In 2026, Moravian students in both courses outperformed Pennsylvania and global cohorts, on mean score and on the share earning a 3 or higher (see below). AP results are not the same as PISA, but they offer nationally benchmarked evidence. The practices behind them are part of daily work across the Upper School, not only in AP courses.

PISA also documents significant declines in mathematics. At Moravian, students are expected to do more than learn procedures. They solve increasingly complex quantitative problems and explain their reasoning clearly. In 2026, every Moravian student who took AP Chemistry earned a 3 or higher. Students who want to go further can continue past AP Calculus BC into Calculus II, Linear Algebra, Multivariable Calculus, and Numerical Analysis. Up to a quarter of our juniors and seniors do quantitative work well beyond the typical high school sequence.

Across subject areas, our students are outperforming both Pennsylvania and global AP cohorts. A few examples from 2026:

The strongest part of this story is what we ask students to do every day. Moravian students do not simply cover content; they are expected to:

These are not occasional enrichment activities. They are core expectations across the Upper School, and they are precisely the capacities PISA is designed to measure.

We also make deliberate choices to protect attention. Our restrictive cell phone policy, paired with The Commons app, keeps students connected to the information they need without making their phones a constant distraction. Students routinely put devices away, take handwritten notes, read without a screen, engage in face-to-face discussion, and work through hard problems without immediately reaching for technology. Our philosophy is not anti-technology. It is about using technology when it genuinely improves learning, and protecting students' ability to concentrate when it does not.

We want to be careful: SAT and AP results are not the same as PISA. But they are rigorous, nationally benchmarked measures, and they show Moravian students thriving in exactly the areas where national results are slipping.

The skills that carry our Upper School students did not appear in ninth grade. They are built, year by year, in our Lower and Middle School classrooms and our data show that foundation is strong.

Students in PS–8 take the MAP Growth assessment, which measures achievement relative to national norms for students in the same grade. On the fall 2026 assessment, students across both campuses performed well above the national norm (50th percentile) in mathematics, reading, and language usage. Across our PS–8 program, campus-level results ranged from the 70th to 78th percentiles across these three areas, with individual grades and cohorts performing as high as the mid-80th percentiles.

Our students take the MAP Growth assessment, which compares their performance with national norms for students in the same grade. On the fall 2026 assessment, students at both campuses scored well above the national average (the 50th percentile) in every area.

Achievement tells us where students are; growth tells us how far they have come. MAP sets the 50th percentile as the typical growth for students who started at a similar level. During the 2025–26 school year, students at both campuses met or exceeded that benchmark in all three areas.

This combination matters. Students who already achieve at high levels often show smaller gains, yet ours are both achieving well above national norms and continuing to grow. It is also worth noting that some HDC students are in our Spanish immersion program and do not receive daily English-language instruction, which makes their strong reading results all the more meaningful.

These results tell an important story not simply about achievement, but about the consistency of strong academic outcomes across our PS–8 program. Our students are performing well above national norms across multiple academic domains and across both campuses, providing a strong foundation for the skills they will continue to develop in the Upper School.

These results reflect several deliberate choices:

In other words, the very conditions PISA identifies as missing in many schools, strong teachers, meaningful relationships, and protected attention, are the conditions our youngest students learn in every day.

PISA measures 15-year-olds, but the habits it reveals are formed long before then. At Moravian, a preschooler learning to listen closely, a fourth grader building reading fluency with a specialist, a seventh grader defending an idea in discussion, and a junior working through a multivariable calculus problem are all part of the same journey.

Our PS–8 students arrive in the Upper School with strong foundations and a track record of growth. Our Upper School then asks them to read deeply, write at length, reason with evidence, and sustain their attention on hard problems. The results, from MAP percentiles in the early grades to SAT and AP scores in the later ones, show that this approach is working.

The national trends are real, and we take them seriously. But they are not destiny. The research points to what helps students learn: skilled teachers, strong relationships, and protected attention. Those have always been at the heart of a Moravian education, and we will continue to protect them.