America Gets an A in Reading, a Gentleman’s D+ in Math

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.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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