Do American students really rank at the bottom of international comparisons and does the United States really spend more per pupil than any other country?
Those are the false claims made by President Donald Trump and his backers to justify shutting the Department of Education.
Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to close the department, which was created in 1979. While it cannot be shuttered without the approval of Congress, the department will likely be starved of funds and staff by the order.
The Trump administration had already sought to gut the department in early March by shedding almost 1,800 jobs, or about half of its staff, which according to Education Secretary Linda McMahon would help "our scores go up."
"No matter how you cut it, the US is not scoring at the bottom of the international rankings," Nat Malkus, senior fellow and the deputy director of education policy at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told AFP. "The US ranks in the middle of the pack on most international assessments."
Fifteen-year-old US students placed above average in reading and close to average in math on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test.
Two other international tests, the PIRLS in 2021 for reading and the TIMSS in 2023 for science and mathematics, also place American kids within the average of the countries tested.
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