Education and the Economy: Our School Performance Matters

By Eric A. Hanushek

The PISA results came out recently, and they were greeted in the normal manner: The vast majority of U.S. citizens, both educators and populace, presumed that the discussion was about a bell tower in Italy and went on to something else. Germany was at the other extreme. Virtually every local newspaper covered the results on its front page.

The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, provides international comparisons of student achievement on a standardized examination for 15-year-olds. The TIMSS tests (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) provide similar information for a different set of countries and age groups. These assessments provide a benchmark for national education systems.

Germans were shocked to learn three years ago that the vaunted German secondary schools were not producing students at the top of the international rankings. They used their previous poor showing to start a national discussion of how...