About those PISA scores…

by | Aug 11, 2012 | International, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Research and Evaluation | 3 comments

Here are PISA scores for 15-year-olds as typically presented by politicians. When you see these, it’s easier for Americans to be more alarmist (oh no, others are ahead of us!).

Average scores

AveragePISAscores 

Percentage of high scorers

 PercentagePISAhighscorers

But we also should look at the data another way.

Number of high scorers

NumberPISAhighscorers

Our size benefits us, and we need to remember that too. [of course we have many more LOW scorers as well…]

More data at American Achievement in International Perspective.

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3 Comments

  2. paul
    paul on August 11, 2012 at 10:49 pm

    i prefer to look at percentages as that gets rid of the over emphasis of us being the 3rd most populous country

    Reply
  3. Barbara
    Barbara on September 6, 2012 at 6:58 pm

    Looking for China and some other countries. How (of all the nations in the world) was this subset determined?

    Reply

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