On the international PISA tests in 2012, American 15-year-olds tended to do best on Reading Literacy, medium on Science Literacy, and worst on Mathematics Literacy. I have no idea whether that's for real or just a reflection of the difficulties of translating PISA tests into dozens of languages and making them equally hard in all. Here's our strong suit Reading, with American racial groups broken out according to the federal governments National Center for Education Statistics website for exploring the new PISA data:





OECD average 496 Shanghai-China 570 Asian Americans 550 Hong Kong-China 545 Singapore 542 Japan 538 Korea, Republic of 536 Massachusetts All Races 527 Finland 524 Ireland 523 Chinese Taipei 523 Canada 523 Connecticut All Races 521 White Americans 519 Poland 518 Multiracial Americans 517 Estonia 516 Liechtenstein 516 New Zealand 512 Australia 512 Netherlands 511 Belgium 509 Switzerland 509 Macao-China 509 Vietnam 508 Germany 508 France 505 Norway 504 United Kingdom 499 United States 498 Denmark 496 Czech Republic 493 Florida All Races 492 Italy 490 Austria 490 Latvia 489 Hungary 488 Spain 488 Luxembourg 488 Portugal 488 Israel 486 Croatia 485 Sweden 483 Iceland 483 Slovenia 481 Hispanic Americans 478 Lithuania 477 Greece 477 Turkey 475 Russian Federation 475 Slovak Republic 463 Cyprus 449 Serbia, Republic of 446 African Americans 443 United Arab Emirates 442 Chile 441 Thailand 441 Costa Rica 441 Romania 438 Bulgaria 436 Mexico 424 Montenegro, Republic of 422 Uruguay 411 Brazil 410 Tunisia 404 Colombia 403 Jordan 399 Malaysia 398 Indonesia 396 Argentina 396 Albania 394 Kazakhstan 393 Qatar 388 Peru 384





In reading, Asian Americans beat all Asian countries, and trailed only the prosperous city of Shanghai.





White Americans came in fourth among historically white countries, behind only Finland, Ireland, and Canada. White Americans beat a couple of dozen historically white countries wealthy enough to belong to the OECD. Of course, most of these aren't as white as they used to be anymore.





Hispanic Americans beat all eight Latin American countries.





African Americans didn't have any competition from predominantly black counties in Africa or the West Indies, but it's worth noting that African Americans beat all eight Latin American countries.





Keep in mind that this is just in Reading, which American tends to do better in than Math or Science.



Keep in mind that Americans spend a huge amount of money on education.



For more postings devoted to analyzing PISA scores, click the Labels: PISA below.



