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中国学生问鼎最新的国际学生评估项目教育调查

Students from China and Singapore came out on top in an international survey of educational achievement. Results of the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, were released Tuesday.

The test is given every three years to 15-year-olds around the world. It measures their knowledge in reading, science and mathematics. The best-performing students in all three subjects were in China. They attend schools in and around Beijing and Shanghai, and two provinces: Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Singapore finished in fifth place in the study. Overall, the test results show American students scoring above average in reading and science, but below average in math.

The test is administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Officials reported that about 600,000 students in 79 nations and educational systems took part in the two-hour computer-based exam last year.

They said schools in each country are chosen randomly to make sure that students come from a wide mix of backgrounds and abilities. PISA is the largest measure of international education performance. The test scores are watched closely by education policy makers.

Here are some of the PISA findings: The average U. S. scores have not changed in a major way in any of the three subjects since 2015.

The U. S. scores are mostly unchanged since when the test was first given in 2000 for reading and, in 2003, for math. American science scores have risen since 2006. Out of the 79 areas, only seven have seen an improvement in their PISA scores since they started offering the test.

The seven are Albania, Colombia, Macau, Moldova, Peru, Portugal and Qatar. The OECD is a group of 36 mostly industrial countries, including the United States.

Financing -- the amount of money spent on education -- is important, but not always necessary for high test scores. Take Estonia, for example. It was one of the top scoring countries, yet education spending there is 30 percent below the OECD average.

With reading being the main focus of the test this year, one of every four students in OECD countries could not complete basic reading tasks. On average across the OECD countries, one in 10 disadvantaged students was able to score in the top quarter of the reading performance of their country.

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