PolitiFact reports:
As he described his intention to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, President Donald Trump derided the U.S. education system, arguing the country performs the worst globally despite spending the most. In an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier that aired Feb. 10, Trump said the U.S. performs poorly on the global scale despite spending more than others on education. “We’re last in education out of 40 states,” Trump said. “We’re last, we’re number 40, but we’re No. 1 in cost per pupil.”
Although Trump said “states,” it became clear as he spoke that he was referring to other nations — he described Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and China as being top in education globally. The U.S. ranks eighth out of 41 countries in the portion of people with at least a secondary, or high school, education. The amount the government spends on education per pupil in the U.S. is well above the international average, but not the highest of the 37 OECD countries measured in 2021.
Read the full article. The piece notes that when PolitiFact asked the White House for evidence, “they pointed us to data on a U.S. educational assessment that provided no international comparison supporting Trump’s claim.”