Hooray! The new PISA scores are out and I have them exclusively. That is, I have them exclusively unless there’s someone else who also wants them. Here are the worldwide scores in reading:
Personally, I have learned to ignore the four Asian “countries” that are always at the top. These are all large cities where they cherry-pick who’s going to take the test, and I have no confidence that it’s any kind of random sample.
That said, the United States ranks 9th out of the remaining 75 countries that took the test. That seems pretty good to me. Better than Denmark, better than Germany, better than Italy, better than Britain, and better than France.
As it happens, we did kinda poorly on the math exam, but that’s OK. We’ll be the ones reading cue cards and keeping all the overseas scientists entertained as they build the robots that will eventually save us from global doom. It’ll all work out. You’ll see.
