It seems like for the entirety of their lives, millennial students have felt the pressure from American politicians, parents and educators to finally catch up with other countries when it comes to math and science learning — a harbinger of how the United States will perform in the future in an increasingly global economy.

But despite a generation’s worth of effort and progress, millennials still lag behind their international peers — and we’re not just talking about Asia — when it comes to tech skills. In 2012, testing company ETS administered a STEM skills test, called PIACC, to people aged 16 to 65 in 23 countries worldwide. The newly sifted study, focusing this time just on the data from the millennial cohort, was released by ETS in February 2015 and widely reported by the Washington Post, the Wall Street Cheat Sheet, and The Atlantic. The results weren’t pretty.

In literacy, for example, U.S. millennials scored lower than 15 of the 22 participating countries. In numeracy, they finished last, tied with Italy and Spain. In terms of problem solving, U.S. millennials scored 18th out of 20, ahead of only Ireland and Poland. The very youngest of the group, aged 16 to 24 — who could be in the workforce until at least 2065 — ranked “dead last” in numeracy and among the bottom in problem solving.

As CNN reported last year, “In a global economy, the benchmark for educational success is no longer improvement by national standards alone, but the best performing school systems internationally.” The good news is that both schools and employers are now taking measures to address the STEM skills gap. For instance, this week in the Pacific Northwest, home to tech job behemoths Amazon and Microsoft, more than 50 top business leaders and educators met to address legislation and education needs to better prepare students to enter the job market with computer science and software training, according to the Seattle Times.

Additionally, USA Today reports that a campaign called Generation Study Abroad has effectively doubled the number of U.S. students choosing to study internationally in the last decade, from around 114,000 students in 2002–03 to nearly 300,000 students in 2014 — with a 9 percent increase in students from STEM fields. At the early to secondary education level, many parents are also opting to send their kids to “tech camps” to learn supplemental STEM skills, like the iD Tech Camps held at Bentley each summer for 7 to 17 year olds.

April Lane is a freelance writer.