PISA 2009 results from NCES

photo © 2005 Tahbepet | more info (via: Wylio)
(with small apology for the visual joke ;-) Whether or not you think such international comparisons are valid, they are part of the education conversation, so keep up to date with the newest release.

"PISA, or the Program for International Student Assessment, is designed to assess what students have learned – both inside and outside of school – as they near the end of compulsory schooling, and how well they apply that knowledge in real-world contexts. Some 69 percent of the U.S. students sampled for PISA are tenth-graders. PISA is coordinated by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization made up of 34 mostly industrialized member countries such as the United States, Japan, Germany, Korea, and the United Kingdom. Some non-OECD member countries, such as Brazil, as well as non-national education systems like Shanghai and Dubai, also participated in the administration of PISA 2009.

NCES’s PISA 2009 report provides international comparisons of average performance in reading literacy and three reading literacy subscales and in mathematics literacy and science literacy; average scores by gender for the United States and other countries, and by student race/ethnicity and school socioeconomic contexts within the United States; the percentages of students reaching PISA proficiency levels, for the United States and the OECD countries on average; and trends in U.S. performance over time."

Links to summary findings, full report and supplemental tables are at:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2011004

U.S. Performance Across International Assessments of Student Achievement

This Special Supplement to The Condition of Education 2009, for the first time, pulls together the evidence from the most recent international assessments taken by nearly a million students from 85 countries worldwide. This includes three internationally benchmarked exams -- the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)--to reveal how the United States compares with other countries across all three core subjects (math, science, reading) at the elementary, middle and high school level in terms of students' average scores and the percentage of students reaching internationally benchmarked performance levels. It also examines trends in U.S. student performance and the range of performance for the highest- and lowest-scoring students in each country.
The executive summary with major findings as well as links to the full text of the report is available here: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2009/analysis/

New NCES/IES Report: Comparative Indicators of Education in the United States and Other G-8 Countries: 2009

This report describes how the education system in the United States compares with education systems in the other G-8 countries--Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom. Twenty-seven indicators are organized in five sections: (1) population and school enrollment; (2) academic performance (including subsections for reading, mathematics, and science); (3) context for learning; (4) expenditure for education; and (5) education returns: educational attainment and income. This report draws on the most current information about education from four primary sources: the Indicators of National Education Systems (INES) at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).
Download the report from: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2009039